I know I stand in line until you think you have the time
To spend an evening with me
And if we go someplace to dance, I know that there's a chance
You won't be leaving with me
And afterwards we drop into a quiet little place and have a drink or two
And then I go and spoil it all by saying something stupid like "I love you"
Something Stupid - Nancy Sinatra
It was refreshingly obvious that he liked her.
The way he hesitated to meet her eyes, the way he constantly sought her touch, even in the way that he liked her as a subject of his photographs, snapping images of her driving or eating ice cream or laying in his bed. It showed in how he said "Nancy" when her voice broke and dissolved to tears, how he held her close and whispered in her ear that he's got her. The way he leaned into her after a hard day.
It was almost like looking at Mike and realizing how much he liked El.
It was simultaneously comforting and scary. He was so new, so different than her other experiences with boys. She hated to compare them, but so different than Steve, who had admittedly tried to act like he didn't care at first. She was never unsure of how Jonathan felt about her; he didn't try to be aloof and downplay his feelings. She could see them in his eyes every time he looked at her.
Somehow the last year snuck up on her and it seemed like every day she found another, unknown way that he cared for others. He made his family breakfast without fail, made sure Will was up for school, and helped his mom with anything she needed, picked up extra shifts to help cover costs of raising two teenage boys. He offered to sleep on the floor when she asked him over in the middle of the night after a nightmare and always seemed excited when she sighed at him and held up the quilt for him to snuggle in next to her.
The way that he cared for her felt abnormally serious and domestic. Is this what people in love were actually like? It was so unlike her parents, the example of a romantic relationship that she'd grown up with, with their lack of chemistry and abundance of nuclear family. The moments she spent with started to feel like home and she slowly felt the space where her best friend used to be being replaced by Jonathan's presence. It broke her hard and healed it.
She had spent so much time trying to be normal that she hadn't felt her shift to definitively abnormal. The time worrying about whether Steve would like her shirt turned into questioning whether Mike was safe and if his friends were okay, turned into moments of putting antiseptic on wounds and scratching the itchy scar on her palm. Life couldn't go back to normal and she realized finally that she couldn't either. Not when her little brother was in love with a girl he had been harboring in their basement, not when she went through a tree into another dimension to fight a paranormal creature, not when her best friend died and she couldn't even tell anyone what happened.
Jonathan had made her a mixtape last week, nearly all full of music that she'd never heard. She'd played in her tape deck in her upstairs bedroom, sitting on the bed with her knees under her chin and playing the whole thing in one sitting. She rolled through The Smiths "Hand in Glove" and wondered what quality of each song made him think that she'd like it. She'd laughed out loud when the tape ended with Madonna's "Like a Virgin." As if he would ever listen to Madonna without the hidden meaning.
"Did you like it?" he would ask her later. She smiled and kissed him on the cheek, telling him honestly that she loved it.
Later that week, he took her on a date, a real date, where he pulled out her chair and paid for her meal and even brought her flowers, grinning sheepishly as she oo'ed and ah'ed half-jokingly at what a romantic boyfriend he was. He'd grinned and swiftly pressed a kiss to her. Afterwards, they made out in the back of his car and she went down on him for the first time, watching his face as he moaned her name and dug his fingers into her hair.
As expected, there had a been a little bit of backlash from their peers, despite Steve's help to try and ease the transition, somehow "Nancy the Slut Wheeler" came back out of nowhere to haunt her for a second time. The people were easy for Jonathan to ignore; for once, people were looking at him and still, like before, he was blatantly unaware. If possible, he had grown to be even more confident, holding her hand while he drove, bumping shoulders with her while they walked through the halls at school before Steve came up and put his arms around them both to ask what they were doing this weekend.
After a tough day of gossiping classmates and dirty looks, Jonathan pulled her to his car, leaned her up against it, holding her shoulders and asking with a straight face, "Do I make you happy?"
"Yes," she replied slowly, confused, "Very happy."
"Then fuck them," he said, walking to the other side of the car and getting in. She'd sighed and looked at high school, wondering how she possibly could have search for the approval of these people. The passenger door moved behind her and she leaned down to look at Jonathan.
"You walking home?" he teased with a smile.
She got in and fiddled with the radio as he started the engine.
"I make you happy too, right?" she'd asked uncertainly. He'd laughed and she wondered when he started being able to make her blush.
"The happiest," he replied with a smile that she couldn't help but return.
They'd had sex again that night and while their first time had been good and passionate and tender and filled with emotion, Jonathan was even better the second time. He started out scared, touching her like she hadn't sucked him off in the back of his car last week, running his fingers down her side hesitantly like she would disappear as a figment of his imagination if he was too eager.
He invited her over under the guise of a movie night; his mom was out and Will was at the Wheelers', leaving them with an empty house. He cooked her breakfast for dinner ("my specialty," he had joked) and they sat on the couch like normal teenagers.
He snuck up behind her and kissed her neck as she got herself a Coke from the fridge, leaving her breathless and gripping the refrigerator door for support as he pressed up behind her. She was sure that leaving the cold air to slink out for this amount of time was terribly bad for the Byers' energy bill, but she couldn't bring herself to mind, leaning into his kisses and gripping his hand.
She'd led him to his room, giggling at his admissions that this had always been a fantasy of his, her grabbing his hand and pointing the way to his bed. She had pushed him down and straddled his hips, running her fingers along his neck and grinding her hips against his, desperate to show him how much she wanted him, desperate to see what would happen when he stopped thinking that he was about to get rejected.
She felt his confidence as he rolled her over instead of letting her stay on top the whole time like she had their first night together. He undressed her and kissed down her neck, silently asking if he could go farther down beyond her bellybutton and grinning when he gave him an affirmative nod.
While he hadn't gotten her off, the care that he took in making that night good for her made her heart swell about twenty times bigger. How he asked her if this was okay, how many fingers she liked. The way he repeated her name over and over like a prayer into her skin and held her softly and strongly, pressing into her like she's everything he has ever wanted and for a moment she believes it.
She liked being his safe haven and she liked how obvious his need for her is. She felt possessive of him, of the way that he kissed, knowing that she got to mold him how she wanted. She felt ownership over his firsts, relishing every one that she took and selfishly loving that for the rest of his life, the story of his first time would include the name Nancy.
She looks at him from across the gym as he takes photos of the middle schoolers and she serves punch, the cherry smell bringing back memories. She smiles as he notices her and waves.
She dances with Dustin and hopes that this gives him some hope. He's a sweetheart, he really is her favorite of Mike's friends. It wasn't too long ago that she was the mean girl, the one who was worried about people's opinions, who wanted nothing more than to feel accepted by the cool people. So she pulled her kid brother's best friend closer and told him that he was her favorite.
The song ends and she gives him a reassuring hug before walking over to Jonathan, who had been standing next to the photo booth and watching her.
"Do you want to get out of here?" she asked, taking her hand in his and watching Mike and Will and their friends talk near the bleachers.
"Yeah," he replied with a small smile. "You mean you aren't leaving with Dustin?"
She can't help the smile on her face at his bad joke. He smiles back and squeezes her hand tighter. "No, he's out of my league anyways. Only going to get me into trouble, you know?"
"You're sweet with him, you know. With all of them." he says softly. She kisses his cheek, mumbles her embarrassed thanks among her blushing, and lets him lead her to the car.
He drove her back to his house and she wonders the whole way if this is what her normal is turning out to be. Flirting with Jonathan in the same place where they'd made a sensory deprivation tank for Eleven. Holding his hand in the same car that had once been filled with bear traps and rounds of ammunition. They were headed to the place where they'd waited for flickering lights and the smell of gasoline still burned her memory.
Shared trauma, isn't that what Murray had said?
She watches him as he drives, tapping the steering wheel as a fake drum while he plays his mixtape and she can't help but grin at his love for The Clash and the way he lets her into these small moments of his life.
Later, he hands her a Coke from the fridge and she actually drinks it this time, unlike the last time she was over when they'd spent all of five minutes together before she lead him to his room. They sit next to each other on the couch, their feet on the coffee table as they watched crummy reruns of Love Boat and Fantasy Island. They talk.
He tells her about Will, how the little brother had been getting more social, going over to Dustin's and riding his bike again. His mom still slept in bed with Will sometimes but still, it was getting better, and last week he had woken up to see Hopper on the couch and it was such a shock, even compared to seeing Bob coming out of his mom's room in the morning. He admitted to making the four of them breakfast, Joyce, Will, Hop, and himself.
She turned on the couch and leaned her shoulder and her head against the back cushion, watching him as he picked at a loose thread on his shirt and talked like she knew he needed to. About how his mom was still sad about her boyfriend dying and her son almost dying and how her best friend and girl she'd taken a strong liking to almost died too. How she woke up in the middle of the night and made a sandwich to act like it wasn't insomnia, it was just hunger.
She was overcome by the need to be closer to him. She scooched forward until her shoulder was pressed up next to his and she draped her legs across his lap, resting her feet on the arm of the couch and facing him again. She smiled at his expression when he gently placed his arms on her legs, wrapping his fingers around her calves lightly. He bit his lip and looked down at her legs then over at her.
"I love you," he said softly.
"What?" the shock hit her and she felt like she had to be hearing things wrong. His eyes widened and his body tensed.
"Nothing, I –"
"No, what'd you say?" she urged, putting her hand on his cheek and turning his face towards her.
"I love you, Nancy, but it's stupid and you don't have to say it back and I shouldn't have said anything and-"
"Jonathan," she laughed, "Stop. Stop talking."
She kissed him on the mouth and pulled her knees under herself, sitting in his lap and wrapping her arms around his neck, pulling him closer and kissing him harder.
He panted as she pulled away, resting his forehead against hers as she grinned.
"I love you, Jonathan," she replied. He opened his eyes and looked at her. "I should have waited longer… I was selfish a-and insecure. I didn't think about Will and that you weren't in a place to be making first moves and I'm sorry that you had to take care of me on Halloween and a billion other times–"
He kissed her fully, laying her back on the couch and holding himself over her, his hand next to her head as the other ran down her side. She pulled his hair with both hands and he released his weight onto her with a sigh.
"I'm done sharing you, Nance," he whispered against her lips. She shivered.
"I'm all yours, Jonathan," she smiled back, "No sharing necessary."
A/N: This is what happens when you binge ST2 in a night and then everything you listen to reminds you of Jonathan and Nancy. Also sorry for the sloppy writing as far as tenses go – sloppy drabbles are sloppy.