lol i lost control of some flashbacks for my fic honeydew (you love me, well) :) i could neither cut them down nor cut them out completely, so this will be their home. will be updated sporadically as I continue to lose control of flashbacks

title/lyrics are from Tate McRae's song The Kids are Alright

As long as the late nights turn into sunrise
As long as we got stars to count on we are alive
As long as our hearts can battle scars and put up a fight
As long as there's tears to cry, the kids are alright

- Tate McRae

December 22nd, 1986 - Hawkins, Indiana

It was 1986 (still — that year felt like it was never going to end), when Nancy returned to Hawkins in December, fresh off her first semester of college in the big city of Boston.

Nancy hadn't anticipated how much she'd end up missing Robin and Eddie and Steve, and even the younger half of the party too, but she had. She'd missed them terribly, like a void in her being she couldn't fill with her new friends at Emerson.

Sure, Nancy had made friends in Boston, but it just...wasn't the same.

She wasn't even necessarily surprised by this, either.

Way back in 1983, before that first run-in with the Upside Down, Nancy actually had friends — good friends, but after Barb and the demogorgon, she just...couldn't anymore, and after four consecutive years battling the monsters that lived beneath her feet, she kept finding that all the relationships she'd formed afterwards just weren't enough, they weren't fulfilling anymore.

What Nancy needed out of a friendship, out of any relationship, wasn't something normal, non-traumatized people could give her, and she couldn't give them what they needed in return.

How could anything a normal nineteen-year-old fretted about, any of the problems they were consumed by come even a little bit close to Nancy's darkest days?

Nancy had seen people — seen friends — die. She'd seen people torn apart from the inside out. She'd shot at humans and beasts alike. She knew very well what it was like to think, to know, she was going to die, even if it didn't come to fruition.

Forgive her if she couldn't quite sympathize with Lisa's unrequited love for their statistics professor, or Rich and his hard-ass parents.

So the friends she'd made in Boston were nice and all, and she was looking forward to being back exploring the new city with them come January, but they didn't — couldn't — hold a candle to her friends back home.

The second Nancy was back in Hawkins, she headed to the House where Eddie, Steve, and Robin were waiting for her, just like she knew they would be.

Robin was applying to colleges. Nancy knew this. She also had a sneaking suspicion that wherever Robin went, Steve would eventually follow. Eddie was more of a mystery to Nancy still, but she had a feeling that if she played her cards right, she could migrate this motley little crew over to Boston in no time.

She just had to plant the seeds.

"Robin, I have something for you," Nancy said, hefting her bag up onto the stool beside her and reaching inside.

Robin's eyes widened curiously as she peered over the counter.

"From Boston?"

"Yeah," she replied, the corner of her mouth ticking up. After just a moment of hesitation, she held out a book on the history of Provincetown.

"Provincetown?" Robin questioned as her eyes pored over the cover.

"Yeah, it's, uh...it's the very tip of Cape Cod — you know, the peninsula of Massachusetts. It's got this incredible history of art and...well, you'll see.

"Oh, neat!"

Robin started to read aloud the book's inscription, but Nancy wasn't paying attention.

There'd been a word on the tip of her tongue, an important one about Provincetown and the one that made it a place Nancy wanted Robin to know about, but something in Nancy's brain refused to let it past her lips and out into the air.

Queer.

Provincetown was queer.

It was weird how difficult that word was to say here in Hawkins.

She said it all the time in Boston.

She admitted she was a...well, she said she liked girls (maybe only girls) for the first time in Boston.

She'd liked girls in Boston, she'd kissed girls in Boston.

But one hour in Hawkins, Indiana and it's like it's a bad word again, like it's something dirty, sinful, like it's something she should be ashamed of.

Maybe that's why she wanted to steal her friends away from this town, abscond with them back to the northeast, where a place like Provincetown could exist.

After Nancy finally was able to admit that she wasn't totally straight (the last of the four of them to have the revelation) Eddie started to call their little group a fruit bowl — hearing the description never failed to make Nancy giggle (and she had laughed so hard she'd cried at his suggestion that they all dress up as various fruits for Halloween), but it also sent a scandalized shiver down her spine every time because she could never even say the word homosexual, never mind toss around the slurs she'd heard her dad mutter at news segments about AIDS like they were nothing but innocuous. Aside from Nancy, her friends were all just so okay with that aspect of themselves. Sure, they hid it when they needed to, which here was practically always, but when it was safe they're all so proud of it, just like the movement suggested.

Nancy hadn't begun to feel even a modicum of that until she'd been in Boston for weeks. She hadn't been able to think about a girl in a way that wasn't completely capital-P platonic without feeling tainted, like she was dirty in a way she could shower off, for even longer.

She couldn't imagine how Boston would change her friends, how much happier they would all be in a city that would actually have a Pride parade come June. God, and Eddie — he would be so unfathomably happy in Boston — happy in a way she's pretty sure he had never experienced before.

She'd never admit it, but that was why she got Robin the book on Provincetown, because there was a part of her that thought if she could paint a pretty enough picture of Massachusetts, Robin wouldn't be able to resist joining her there and then everyone else would eventually follow.

"Steve, I have something for you, too," Nancy said, and watched as Robin laughed — she had divulged this particular facet of her scheme to Robin on their last phone call before Nancy's return to Hawkins.

Steve's eyebrows shot up.

"You got me a Boston present, too?"

"Uh..." Nancy hesitated, elbowing Robin as she continued to snicker, "It's, well, I don't know if I'd call it a present, but technically I did get it in Boston. Just...hang on."

Nancy turned her back on him to pull the two items out of her bag, positioning them just so before she spun back and shoved a textbook and an overturned pamphlet into Steve's arms so he instinctively grabbed them from her.

"Nance, wha—"

"I took Psych-101 this semester to fill my gen-ed science credit," she cut him off, knowing she'd have to give him at least a little bit of an explanation for this otherwise out-of-the-blue gift, "It wasn't my thing, but it kept making me think of you."

"Me? Why?"

"I don't know," she said, her lips quirking up, "You always just...understand people, like, without even trying. That's not something everyone can just do — everyone kind of just gravitates towards you when they need help. The course was all about human nature and why our brains work the way they do. I just sort of feel like you'd be good at it."

"Good at what?"

Nancy flipped over the pamphlet so he could read the title: Counseling & Psychiatry

Steve looked flummoxed.

Before he could say anything, Nancy barreled on with a poke to the hard cover of the book Steve was still holding, "and this is my Intro to Psychology textbook," Steve made a face, "No, don't look at me like that — it doesn't read like a textbook, I promise — and there's a lot of real life examples of all these really interesting psychological phenomena. And at the end of each section there's a list of recommended readings that go deeper into everything, because this really is just an introduction. Promise me you'll at least try?"

Steve looked at her with a skeptical expression, but years of sports had made him a good one, so he relented.

"Yeah, yeah, sure. Promise."

"I'd ask if you had something for me, too," Eddie cut in as Steve tentatively thumbed through the first few pages of the textbook to the table of contents, "but now I'm really hoping you don't."

"Oh be quiet," Robin said, giving Eddie a shove, "You're just jealous Nancy hasn't picked you out an aptitude yet."

Nancy scrunched her nose at Eddie as he gave her a secret smile — so far, only Nancy had been privy to Eddie's burgeoning knack for storytelling and they'd be keeping it that way for the time-being.

"Alright, everybody shut up," Eddie said, "Put the books down, nerds. Little Shop of Horrors has been out for three days and I've graciously waited so I could watch it with you losers, so if we miss the next showing there will be Hell to pay."

So they went to the movies together that afternoon, and they'd see several more throughout Nancy's winter break. Soon enough, she was back in Boston for the second half of her freshman year, back to hearing from her friends who, as the days and weeks went by were becoming more like her family, during short phone calls at strange hours. Robin kept Nancy up to date on Steve's progress with the psychology textbook — by the end of the Nancy's second semester, he'd read through the entire thing twice and was working on tracking down the recommended readings for a few of the chapters he'd found particularly interesting.

Nancy was pleased, and though Robin had already devastated her with the news that she'd decided on a school in Washington by the time she returned to Hawkins for the summer, she had a feeling that somehow, some way, her crusade to have all her friends with her in Boston wasn't over quite yet.

After all, they were still young.

And they had nothing but time.

god i just love them so much

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