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"Maybe the best things in life aren't the ones we plan for. Maybe they're the ones that find us when we finally stop running."
Philadelphia — February 1990
The monthly meetups were Steve's idea.
He said it on the rooftop of the radio station, summer of '89, graduation confetti stuck in his hair and cheap champagne fizzing on his tongue. They'd done it. Survived. The Upside Down was gone—actually gone—and Vecna was dead. Joyce Byers with an axe, which Steve still couldn't quite believe.
Robin was crying, the good kind. Jonathan had his arm around his mom. Will stood with them, lighter than Steve had ever seen him. And Nancy stood next to Steve, close enough that their shoulders almost touched.
Nothing keeping us apart, he'd said. Let's do this every month. So we don't lose each other.
Robin nodded through her tears. Jonathan gave him that quiet half-smile. And Nancy turned to look at him, and Steve forgot how words worked, and she said Yes. Steve, yes.
It was supposed to be good. A way to stay connected.
What Steve didn't realize then—what he's only beginning to understand seven months later—is that he built himself a beautiful kind of torture.
Robin's weird uncle has a place in Philadelphia. A brownstone that smells like coffee and old books, furniture frozen somewhere in 1962, central enough that everyone can get there. Nancy takes the train from Boston. She'd left the Herald six months after the battle, chasing a bigger story, a bigger life. Jonathan comes from New York. Robin drives from Smith. And Steve makes the ten-hour trek from Hawkins, the only one of them who stayed.
He'd bought the truck three months ago, a beat-up Chevy with a camper shell on the back. Robin calls it "Steve's Mobile Crisis Unit." He calls it practical. Ten hours to Philly. Four to Terre Haute when Lucas needs help moving. Two to Purdue when Dustin needs bailing out of whatever science experiment went sideways.
The truck smells like old coffee and baseball gloves. There's a sleeping bag in the back for the long haul. Steve's gotten good at sleeping in parking lots.
It works. It's practical.
It's also slowly killing him.
"So." Robin slides onto the sagging floral couch, two beers in hand. "Kristen didn't work out either?"
Steve takes the bottle. Doesn't look at her. Across the room, Nancy's curled up in the uncle's ancient armchair, telling Jonathan about some story she's chasing. She ticks points off on her fingers as she talks. Her eyes go bright and sharp.
"She said I was emotionally unavailable."
"Were you?"
"Probably."
"That's two in a row, Steve. First Amanda, now Kristen. You're collecting rejection lines like baseball cards."
"Thanks for that."
"I'm just saying." Robin bumps his shoulder. "Maybe the problem isn't them."
Steve doesn't answer. Across the room, Nancy laughs at something Jonathan said, and Steve watches the way her nose scrunches, the way her whole face lights up.
The problem isn't them, he thinks. The problem is her. The problem is that I've been comparing every woman I meet to Nancy Wheeler since I was seventeen years old, and none of them stand a chance.
"Okay, so, you know how in movies there's always that guy at the party who's, like, brooding in the corner while the girl he loves is across the room? And everyone in the audience is like, 'just talk to her, you idiot'?" Robin takes a sip of her beer. "You're that guy right now. Very Duckie at prom. Except you have better hair."
"I'm not brooding."
"Steve, you've got your sad puppy face on. It's, like, painfully obvious."
"I don't have a sad puppy face."
"You absolutely do. It's like—" She scrunches her face into an exaggerated pout. "Like that. Exactly like that."
Steve shoves her shoulder. "Shut up."
Later, Nancy catches his arm in the hallway.
"Hey." She's looking up at him. "I'm glad we're doing this. The monthly thing."
"Yeah." He smiles, easy and practiced. "Me too, Wheeler."
"You okay? You seemed quiet tonight."
"Just tired. Long drive."
She studies him for a moment. Nancy Wheeler, who notices everything, who built a career on asking the questions no one else thinks to ask.
"Okay," she says finally. "But you know you can talk to me, right? If something's wrong?"
"I know."
The lie sits in his chest, smooth and familiar.
He's gotten good at carrying it.
Hawkins — March 1990
Steve finds Mike at Hopper's cabin on a Tuesday afternoon.
He's been checking on the place for months now, ever since Joyce asked him to. She and Hopper are planning their move to Montauk after the wedding, and someone needs to make sure the place doesn't fall apart before they figure out what to do with it. Steve volunteered. It gives him something to do.
The cabin looks the same as it always did. Same weathered wood. Same Christmas lights Joyce refused to take down after El died. There's a car in the driveway that Steve doesn't recognize, and when he pushes open the door, he finds Mike Wheeler sitting on the floor in front of the fireplace, surrounded by papers.
"Mike?"
Mike's head snaps up, his eyes red-rimmed. He looks younger than nineteen, sitting there in the dim light, papers scattered around him like fallen leaves.
"Steve." Mike's voice is rough. "I didn't—I wasn't—"
"It's okay." Steve closes the door behind him, shuts out the cold. "I come by every couple weeks. Check on things."
"For Hopper?"
"For Joyce, mostly. She worries." Steve crosses to the fireplace, sinks down onto the floor a few feet from Mike. "You okay?"
Mike laughs. It's not a happy sound. "I'm sitting alone in an empty cabin where my girlfriend used to live, surrounded by every letter I ever wrote her that she'll never read. What do you think?"
Steve doesn't answer. He looks at the papers—Mike's handwriting, pages and pages of it.
"I keep thinking she'll come back," Mike says quietly. "I know that's—I mean, I was there. I saw what happened. But sometimes I wake up and for a second I forget, and then I remember, and it's like losing her all over again."
"That's not stupid, man."
"It is, though. She's gone. She's—" Mike's voice breaks. "She chose this. She chose to save everyone. And I'm supposed to be grateful, and I am, but I'm also so angry, Steve. I'm so angry that she had to be the one. That it's always her."
Steve thinks about El.
"You know what I think?" Steve says. "I think you should, like—I don't know—go find her."
Mike stares at him. "She's gone, Steve."
"No, I don't mean—" Steve runs a hand through his hair. "The waterfall place. The three waterfalls. That's where she wanted to be, right? Where she imagined being at peace."
"That's just something I said. In the D&D game. I was trying to give everyone hope."
"Yeah, but maybe—" Steve shifts, trying to find the words. "Maybe you were telling yourself something true, you know? Like, giving yourself a place to look for her. A way to believe she's okay."
Mike doesn't answer. His hands tremble against the papers.
"You should travel," Steve says. "Go find a place with three waterfalls, you know? Maybe it's in South America. Maybe it's wherever. But you should look. Try to find some peace." He shrugs. "That's what she would've wanted for you, I think."
"How do you know what she would have wanted?"
"Because she loved you." Steve holds his gaze. "And when you love someone, you want them to be happy. Even if you can't—even if you're not there."
Mike's crying now, quiet tears sliding down his cheeks. Steve doesn't say anything. Just sits there, solid and present.
After a long while, Mike says, "You really think I should go? Just... leave?"
"I think you should find out who you are when you're not, like, waiting for her to come back." Steve stands, offers Mike a hand. "And I think she'd want you to live, Mike. Really live. Not just survive."
Mike takes his hand and lets Steve pull him up.
"Thanks," Mike says. "For—I don't know. For not telling me I'm crazy."
"You're not crazy. You're grieving." Steve squeezes his shoulder. "That's different."
He helps Mike gather the letters. Doesn't read them—that's not his place. But he helps Mike pack them carefully into a box, helps him carry them to his car.
"I'll think about it," Mike says. "The traveling thing."
"That's all I'm asking."
Steve watches him drive away. Then he goes back into the cabin, checks the pipes, checks the roof.
The Christmas lights catch the afternoon sun. Steve leaves them exactly where they are.
Hawkins — April 1990
Robin calls on a Thursday night, three hours into what was supposed to be a simple phone chat.
"—and then she said, 'Robin, I love you, but you need to stop alphabetizing my bookshelf,' which—okay, she has a point, I get that, but Steve, it was chaos. Pure chaos. The fiction was mixed with the nonfiction, and don't even get me started on the biographies, which were just—they were everywhere. Like if John Hughes directed a library scene except without the quirky romance, just pure organizational disaster. Someone had taken the entire concept of the Dewey Decimal System and just—"
"Robin."
"—thrown it out a window, which, actually, maybe that's what happened, because her window does stick sometimes and she mentioned once that—"
"Robin."
"What?"
"Breathe."
There's a pause. Then a long exhale. "Sorry. I'm spiraling."
"Yeah, I noticed." Steve shifts the phone to his other ear, settles deeper into his couch. "What's actually going on?"
"I don't know. I just—" Another breath. "Vickie's talking about moving in together. After graduation. Getting an apartment in the city."
"That's good, right? You guys have been together for like two years."
"One year and eight months. But yes. It's good. It's great. It's terrifying."
"Why terrifying?"
"Because what if I mess it up?" Robin's voice goes small. "What if we move in together and she realizes I'm, like, a lot? You know? Like, I know I'm a lot. I talk too much and I have opinions about bookshelf organization and I can't fall asleep unless I've checked that the door is locked exactly three times, and what if she decides that's too weird and she leaves and then I've lost my apartment and my girlfriend and—"
"Robin." Steve's voice is gentle. "She already knows you're a lot. She's been dating you for one year and eight months. She knows about the bookshelf thing and the lock thing and the talking thing. She's still here."
Silence.
"You really think so?"
"I know so." Steve smiles even though she can't see it. "You're a lot, Robin. But you're, like, a good lot. The best kind of a lot."
"That doesn't make grammatical sense."
"Yeah, well, neither does your bookshelf anxiety, so we're even."
Robin laughs. "I miss you, dingus."
"Miss you too, dude." He means it. "Now go call Vickie and tell her you want to move in together. And stop reorganizing her books."
"No promises on the books."
"Robin."
"Fine. I'll try to stop reorganizing her books." A pause. "Steve?"
"Yeah?"
"Thanks. For—you know. Talking me down."
"Anytime. That's what best friends are for."
He hangs up. The room goes quiet.
Steve thinks about Robin and Vickie, building a life together. About how scary that is, and how worth it.
He wonders if he'll ever have that.
Hawkins — May 1990
"We need advice," Max announces, pushing past Steve into the tiny studio. "Relationship advice."
Steve stares at them. "From me?"
"You're the only person we know who's actually dated," Lucas says. "Like, seriously dated. Multiple people."
"That's not—I mean, yes, technically, but I'm terrible at it. I've been dumped by literally every woman I've gone out with in the past year."
"Perfect." Max drops onto his couch. "You know what not to do."
Steve looks between them. Max, with her red hair and fierce eyes, somehow even more formidable now than she was before everything. Lucas, steady and solid, the guy who never gave up on her.
"What's going on?" Steve asks.
They exchange a look. That couple look, the one that says you tell him without words.
"We've been together for a while now," Lucas says carefully. "Like, really together. Since she woke up."
"Since before that," Max corrects. "Since the beginning, really. We just kept getting interrupted."
"Right. But now there's no—you know. And we're trying to figure out—"
"How to be normal," Max finishes. "How to be a couple who goes on normal dates and fights about normal things."
Steve sinks into the chair across from them. "And you came to me?"
"Dustin said you give surprisingly good advice when you're not being an idiot," Lucas offers.
"Great."
"He also said you're 'emotionally intelligent in a way that's frankly surprising given the hair situation.'"
Steve runs a hand through his hair. "My hair is fine."
"Your hair is a monument to the 1980s," Max says. "But that's not the point. The point is—how do you do it? How do you date someone without messing it up?"
Steve thinks about Nancy. About all the ways he's tried to move on and failed.
"You want the truth?"
They nod.
"I have no idea." Steve spreads his hands. "Every relationship I've had has ended. Every single one."
"That's depressing," Max says.
"Yeah, it is." Steve leans forward. "But here's the thing—the, like, the failing part? That's not—" He stops. Tries again. "You're gonna mess up. Both of you. That's just gonna happen. But the thing is, you keep showing up. You choose each other, even when it's hard. Especially when it's hard."
"That's it?" Lucas asks. "Just... keep trying?"
"That's everything." Steve looks at them—these two kids who survived the unsurvivable. "You've already done the hard part. You made it through. Now you just keep choosing each other. Every day. Even when you fight. Even when you're scared."
Max is quiet for a moment. "That's actually not terrible."
"Don't sound so surprised."
"I'm very surprised." But she's smiling. "Thanks, Steve."
"Anytime." Steve stands, then pauses. "How's school going? You guys at Indiana State now?"
"Yeah," Lucas says. "Sports medicine program. It's good. Hard, but good."
"He's trying to convince me to move to Terre Haute with him," Max says. "But I'm taking classes at Hawkins Community. Art. Figured I'd stay local for now."
"She's been teaching some of the kids how to skate on weekends," Lucas adds. "At the park."
"Yeah?" Steve grins. "That's cool, Max."
She shrugs, but she's smiling. "Beats sitting around feeling sorry for myself."
"Now get out. I've got papers to grade."
He walks them to the door. Watches them head down the stairs, hand in hand.
Two people choosing each other.
He gets it. He does.
Hawkins — June 1990
Steve finds Derek Turnbow sitting alone in the dugout after practice.
The other kids have cleared out—parents picking them up, bikes disappearing down the street. But Derek's still there, glove in his lap, staring at nothing.
"Hey." Steve drops onto the bench next to him. "You okay?"
Derek shrugs. Doesn't look up.
Steve waits.
"Do you ever feel like you're not really here?" Derek asks finally. His voice is small. "Like you're back in the dark, and this"—he gestures at the field—"is the dream?"
Steve's hand tightens on the bench. He knows that feeling. Knows it too well.
"Yeah," he says. "Sometimes."
"The other kids don't get it." Derek picks at the lacing on his glove. "They were in the pods too, but they don't remember. Or they pretend they don't. But I remember everything. The dark. The cold. The—" His voice breaks. "I thought I was gonna die in there."
"But you didn't."
"No." Derek looks up at him. His eyes are too old for twelve. "Because of you guys. You came and got us out."
Steve doesn't know what to say. He thinks about the pods, about the kids they pulled from that nightmare, about how everyone wants to pretend it never happened.
"You know what helped me?" Steve says. "After all the bad stuff?"
"What?"
"Having something to do, you know? Something that mattered. Something I could be good at." He nods at Derek's glove. "You've got a hell of an arm, kid. Best I've seen in years of coaching."
Derek ducks his head, but not fast enough to hide it. "Really?"
"Really. You keep working at it, you could go somewhere. College scouts, maybe. Get out of Hawkins, see the world."
"You think?"
"I know." Steve stands, holds out his hand. "Come on. I'll give you a ride home. And tomorrow, we're gonna work on your curveball. If you're gonna be the best, you gotta put in the time."
Derek takes his hand and lets Steve pull him up.
"Coach H?"
"Yeah?"
Derek opens his mouth. Closes it. Opens it again. "You ever tell anyone? About the pods?"
"No," Steve says. "That's yours to tell. Not mine."
Derek nods.
"I'm never gonna pretend it didn't happen," Steve says. "Not with you. Not with any of the kids."
Derek doesn't answer. Just picks up his glove and walks to Steve's truck.
Derek stares out the window on the drive home. Steve doesn't try to fill the silence.
When they pull up, Derek gets out without a word. Slams the door harder than necessary.
Steve sits there, wondering if he said the wrong thing. If he made it worse.
Then Derek's mom appears on the porch, waves, mouths something that might be thank you.
Maybe that's enough.
He starts the car and drives home.
Hawkins — July 1990
Joyce Byers is getting married.
The ceremony is small. Backyard of the old Byers house, white folding chairs on the grass. Christmas lights strung between trees. Wildflowers in mason jars.
Steve stands near the back with Robin and Dustin. Nancy's up front with her family: Karen dabbing her eyes, Ted looking confused, Holly fidgeting in her flower girl dress. Mike's there too, standing stiff in a suit, but he looks better than he did at the cabin. Lighter.
Hopper cries during the vows—big, heaving sobs that make Joyce laugh and cry at the same time.
"Jesus," Steve mutters. "He fought a Demogorgon and this is what breaks him?"
"Told you," Dustin whispers. "Total softie."
"We're all softies," Steve says. "We just hide it better."
The reception is chaos. Dustin's sound system keeps cutting out. Murray's three drinks deep and telling everyone about Hopper's "secret years." Max and Lucas are slow-dancing in the corner. Will's talking to a dark-haired guy Steve doesn't recognize, both of them laughing.
And Derek Turnbow is here with his mom, because Joyce invited everyone.
"Coach H!" Derek waves from across the yard. "Did you see that catch yesterday?"
"Saw it." Steve grins. "Best catch of the season."
"I've been practicing. Like you said—soft hands, watch the ball in."
"You're doing great, kid."
Derek beams. His mom catches Steve's eye and mouths thank you. Steve nods.
This is what he's building. Not the family he imagined (wife, six kids, house full of noise), but something.
Nancy finds him at the drinks table.
"Hey, stranger."
"Wheeler." He raises his cup. "Hell of a wedding."
"Joyce deserves it." Nancy pours herself a drink, makes a face. "God, what is this?"
"Murray made it."
"That explains everything."
They stand there, watching the party. Hopper spinning Joyce across the dance floor. Jonathan taking pictures. Holly chasing fireflies.
Jonathan wanders over, camera around his neck. "Hey. Good speech, by the way."
"I didn't give a speech."
"I mean what you said to Mike. At the cabin." Jonathan adjusts his lens, not quite making eye contact. "He told me. About the waterfalls. That was—yeah. That was good."
Steve doesn't know what to do with a compliment from Jonathan Byers. "Thanks, man."
An awkward beat. Then Jonathan lifts his camera. "Hold still. The light's doing something weird with your hair."
"Weird good or weird bad?"
"Just weird." He takes the shot. "That's going in the album."
Jonathan drifts back toward Will, and Nancy appears at Steve's elbow.
"I talked to Mike earlier," Nancy says. "He's planning a trip. South America."
"Yeah. He mentioned."
"He said it was your idea. The waterfall thing."
Steve takes a sip of his beer. "Just seemed like he needed, I don't know, permission to try."
Nancy looks away. "That was kind of you."
"He's a good kid."
"You're good with them." Her voice drops. "The kids. All of them. Mike, Holly, Dustin, Derek. You're like the big brother everyone needs."
Steve thinks about the six kids he used to imagine.
"Dance with me?" Nancy asks. "For old times' sake."
He lets her pull him onto the grass. The song is slow. She fits against him the same way she always did.
The song ends. She steps back. Squeezes his hand once.
Then she's gone, and Steve's standing there alone, and the band starts something fast and cheerful that doesn't match anything he's feeling.
The Wedding
Nancy watches Steve dance with Holly.
He's terrible at it—all elbows and exaggerated spins—and Holly's giggling so hard she can barely stand. He dips her dramatically, nearly drops her, catches her at the last second with a "whoa, whoa, okay, we're good, we're good."
Nancy's supposed to be listening to Jonathan talk about his film program. Something about a project he's working on. Cannibalism as metaphor. She should be paying attention.
Instead she's watching Steve Harrington make her little sister laugh.
"You okay?"
She turns. Jonathan's looking at her with that quiet, knowing expression. The one that used to make her feel seen and now just makes her feel caught.
"Fine. Just tired."
"You've been watching Steve a lot tonight."
"I've been watching everyone."
Jonathan doesn't push. He never pushes. That's part of why they ended—all that gentleness, all that understanding, and neither of them ever saying what they actually meant.
I think we want different things, she'd told him last year. I think we've wanted different things for a while.
Yeah, he'd said. I think you're right.
No fight. No drama. Just two people who'd grown in different directions, finally admitting it out loud.
Nancy had felt relieved. And then guilty about feeling relieved. And then she'd thrown herself into work and tried not to think about it.
But now she's watching Steve spin Holly around the dance floor, watching him high-five Derek Turnbow, watching him stand patient and solid while Dustin explains something complicated with his hands.
And she's thinking about that night in the Upside Down, years ago. The way he'd looked at her in the dim light. The way he'd said you're there, Nance, you've always been there.
"I'm gonna get another drink," she tells Jonathan.
"Nancy."
She stops.
"Whatever's going on with you," Jonathan says, "you should probably figure it out. Before someone gets hurt."
He's not accusing. He's not even upset. He's just telling her the truth, the way he always does.
Nancy doesn't answer. She walks toward the drinks table, but she doesn't stop there.
She walks past the table, past the fairy lights, past the edge of the party. She walks until she's standing alone at the fence, looking out at the Indiana flatland stretching to nothing.
What do I want?
She wanted to be a journalist—she's doing that. She wanted to get out of Hawkins—she did that. She wanted to make a difference—she's trying.
So why does she feel like she's still searching for something?
Behind her, the party goes on. Music and laughter and the clink of glasses.
Nancy stays at the fence, watching the empty fields.
Philadelphia — October 1990
Steve buys the house in September.
114 Maple Street. Four bedrooms. Big yard. Sagging porch. Something living in the attic.
He doesn't tell the others. It feels too personal, somehow. Too much like hope.
The October meetup is small: just him and Robin and Nancy. Jonathan's stuck in the city with a project deadline.
"So," Nancy says, setting down her chopsticks. "What's new?"
"Same old," Steve says. "Teaching. Coaching. Derek's arm is even better than I thought—scouts might look at him in a few years."
"That's great."
"Yeah. He works hard." Steve pushes rice around his plate. "All the kids do. The ones who were in the pods, I mean. They're—I don't know. Resilient."
"You're good with them," Nancy says. "You really care."
"Someone has to." He looks down at his hands. "They went through something nobody else can understand. Except us."
Nancy looks away. Robin's watching them both with that look she gets—the one that means she's cataloging everything for later analysis.
"Anyway," Steve says. "What about you? How's Boston?"
"Busy." Nancy tucks a strand of hair behind her ear. "Good. The paper's letting me take on bigger stories."
"That's cool. I mean, that's what you wanted, right? The big city, the career, all of it?"
Something flickers across Nancy's face. "What's that supposed to mean?"
"Nothing, I just—" Steve blinks. "I meant it's good. That you're doing what you wanted."
"You said it like you were reciting my life plan back to me."
"I wasn't—" He looks at Robin for help. She raises her hands.
"I'm Switzerland," Robin says. "Continue."
"I didn't mean anything by it, Nance. Seriously."
Nancy exhales. "Sorry. I'm—yeah. It's exactly what I wanted."
Later, Robin finds Steve on the roof.
"I bought a house," he tells her.
Robin blinks. "A house?"
"Maple Street. Four bedrooms. Big yard." He shrugs. "Needs work. But it's got good bones."
"Did you tell your parents?"
Steve snorts. "They're in Cabo. Or maybe Monaco? I don't know. They sent a postcard last month." He looks out at the city lights. "They sold the Hawkins house two years ago. Didn't even tell me until after."
Robin takes a breath.
"This one's mine," Steve says. "Not theirs. Mine."
"Is this about Nancy?"
Steve takes a breath. "It's about me. About building something. Having a place that's actually mine. Where people are welcome. Where it's not just—" He stops. "Where it's not empty."
"And if she never—"
"Then I'll fill it with other things." He looks out at the city lights. "I've got the kids. Dustin, Mike, Max, Lucas, Holly. Derek and the others. I've got you."
"Aw." Robin leans her head against his shoulder. "That's disgustingly mature of you."
"I know. It's very annoying."
"Very annoying," she agrees. "I'm proud of you, dingus."
"Yeah." He smiles. "I know."
Montauk — New Year's Eve, 1990
The first New Year's at Joyce and Hopper's new place.
Steve pulls up with Dustin in the passenger seat, still arguing about whether a bard is a viable solo class.
"In the right campaign—" Dustin starts.
"No campaign, dude," Steve says. "No campaign in history."
"You just don't appreciate support roles."
"I appreciate surviving."
Steve parks the truck. "We're here. Stop arguing."
"I'm not arguing. I'm educating."
Robin and Vickie are already inside—they'd driven down from Massachusetts yesterday. The house is chaos—lights everywhere, massive tree in the corner, food covering every surface. Everyone's here. Dustin immediately finds Murray to argue about physics. Max and Lucas are on the couch together. Will with David, officially now, and nobody bats an eye. Mike looking lighter than he has in months, talking about his trip. He's leaving in two weeks, South America, finally going to find his waterfalls.
Nancy's on the floor with Holly, teaching her a card game. Her hair's down. She looks happy.
Steve watches from his spot by the window. Dustin appears with two beers.
"You know," Dustin says, "you could actually talk to her instead of staring."
"I'm not staring."
"You're always staring. It's kind of pathetic." He hands Steve a bottle. "Endearing, but pathetic."
"Thanks for that."
"I'm your best friend. It's my job." Dustin takes a drink. "She asked about you, by the way. Earlier."
Steve's heart does something stupid. "She asks about everyone, dude."
"She asked specifically if you were happy. If Hawkins was treating you right." Dustin shrugs. "That's not a general question."
At midnight, Steve ends up on the deck with Nancy. The ocean crashes against the rocks below, loud enough that they have to lean close to hear each other.
"Happy New Year, Harrington."
"Happy New Year, Wheeler."
She hugs him, brief and warm. She smells like champagne and something floral.
And then she's gone, back inside to the countdown cheers, and Steve finishes his beer alone on the deck. The waves keep hitting the rocks below. He can hear fireworks somewhere down the beach.
Maybe next year.
Boston — February 1991
The story breaks on a Tuesday.
City councilman. Embezzlement. Paper trail a mile long. Nancy's byline, front page, above the fold.
Her editor takes her out for drinks. Her coworkers shake her hand. Someone mentions a promotion. The managing editor calls it "the kind of work that changes careers."
Nancy goes home to her apartment—nice apartment, good neighborhood, exactly the kind of place she always imagined herself living, and she doesn't bother turning on the lights. She drops her bag by the door, kicks off her shoes, sits on the couch with her coat still on.
She'd spent eight months on this story. Eight months of late nights, cold coffee, documents spread across her floor.
And now it's here. She feels nothing.
No—hollow. A prize she doesn't want.
Steve's in Hawkins, building a house. Teaching kids. Showing up for people who need him.
She pictures him at the wedding: how settled he looked, how comfortable.
She calls Robin before she can think about it more.
"Hey!" Robin's voice is bright, a little breathless. "What's up? I saw the article—congrats, by the way, that was incredible. The part about the offshore accounts? Chef's kiss. Really. I mean, I don't usually read political corruption stories for fun, but yours was actually readable, which is—"
"Robin."
"Yeah?"
"How did you know? With Vickie. That she was the one."
Silence. Then: "Wow, okay, we're going there. Um. Let me think."
Nancy waits.
"I guess..." Robin pauses. "I guess I knew because she made the scary things less scary. Like, you know how I get. The spiraling, the anxiety, all of it. And Vickie doesn't make that go away—she's not magic—but when I'm with her, it feels manageable. Like I can handle it. Because she's there."
"That's it?"
"I mean, there's other stuff. She laughs at my jokes. She doesn't mind that I talk too much. She thinks my obsession with Band-Aid brand bandages is 'endearing' instead of 'deeply weird.'" Robin pauses. "Why are you asking?"
"No reason."
"Nancy Wheeler. I've known you for six years. You don't do 'no reason.'"
Nancy closes her eyes. "I got everything I wanted today. The story broke. Everyone's congratulating me. And I just feel..."
"Empty?"
"Yeah."
"Okay, so, don't kill me for saying this, but—have you considered that maybe you're, like, really good at the wrong thing?" Robin pauses. "No, that's not—I don't mean journalism is wrong. I mean—you just broke the biggest story of your career and you called me instead of celebrating. That's—I don't know. That's information, right?"
"Since when are you a therapist?"
"Since I started dating one." A pause. "Okay, Vickie's not technically a therapist yet, she's still in grad school, but she's very insightful, and we talk about you guys a lot, and—"
"Robin."
"Right. Shutting up." A breath. "Look, I'm not gonna tell you what the answer is. But the question's kind of asking itself at this point, isn't it?"
"What question?"
"You know what question." Her voice drops. "You've known for a while, I think."
Nancy doesn't answer.
"I gotta go," Robin says. "Vickie's making dinner and I promised I'd help, which mostly means I'll stand there and hand her things while she does the actual cooking. But call me if you need to talk, okay? Anytime. Don't wait too long, Nancy."
The line goes dead.
Nancy stays on the couch, phone still in her hand. Outside, someone's car alarm goes off, then stops.
Robin's voice keeps playing back: Life's short. We literally know that better than anyone.
Montauk — New Year's Eve, 1991
The second New Year's.
Nancy's single, has been for months, since the brief thing with the photographer ended. Steve notices. Hates himself for noticing.
Mike's back from South America, tanned and lighter, talking about the waterfalls he found.
"You were right," Mike tells Steve quietly, while the others argue about what movie to watch. "I needed to go. I found this place in Ecuador—three waterfalls, just like I imagined. And I sat there, and I—" His voice catches. "I finally let her go. Not forget her. Just... let go."
"I'm glad, man."
"Because of you." Mike meets his eyes. "You gave me permission to try."
Steve doesn't know what to say to that.
On the deck, midnight approaching, Nancy finds him.
"Mike seems better," she says.
"He is. He found what he was looking for."
"Because you told him to go."
"I just—" Steve picks at the label on his beer. "He needed to hear it was okay."
They stand in silence, watching the waves.
"Can I ask you something?" Nancy's voice is quiet.
"Sure."
"The house. Robin mentioned it. Four bedrooms." She turns to look at him. "What are you building?"
The truth is complicated. It's about her and also not about her, about hope and also acceptance, about the family he imagined and the family he found.
"I don't know," he says finally. "Something good, I hope. A place for people. The kids are always crashing at my apartment, so I figured—" He laughs. "I figured I'd give them more room to crash."
"That's very you."
"What does that mean?"
"It means you take care of people." Nancy's looking at him differently. "It's one of my favorite things about you."
The countdown starts inside, voices calling out the numbers.
Ten. Nine. Eight.
"Happy New Year, Wheeler."
Five. Four. Three.
"Happy New Year, Steve."
One.
She hugs him, longer this time. Her hand lingers on his arm after she pulls away.
"I'm glad you stayed," she says. "In Hawkins. I'm glad someone's there, holding it all together."
She goes back inside before he can respond.
Steve stays on the deck, replaying every word.
Hawkins — Summer 1992
Nancy comes home for Holly's birthday.
She doesn't mean to stay—she's got deadlines, sources, a story she's been chasing for months. But Holly begs, and Karen guilts, and before Nancy knows it, she's been in Hawkins for two weeks.
Two weeks of dinners with her family. Two weeks of watching Holly grow up. Two weeks of seeing Mike, peaceful now, writing stories in the cabin where El used to live.
Nancy finds Mike at the cabin on a Wednesday afternoon.
He's at the kitchen table with legal pads stacked around him, writing in that cramped handwriting she's known since he was six. The Christmas lights are still up, and the place smells like coffee and old wood.
"Hey." She sets a bag of groceries on the counter. "Mom said you forget to eat when you're working."
"Mom's projecting." But he takes the sandwich she holds out.
"Can I read something?"
Mike hesitates, then pushes a legal pad across the table.
It's a story about a group of kids in a small town who find a girl in the woods. She has powers she can't explain and a number instead of a name. Nancy reads three pages, then ten, then twenty. Mike eats his sandwich and doesn't watch her.
It's rough—the dialogue runs long and the structure wanders. But there's a scene where the girl uses her powers to save a boy from drowning, and the boy asks her why she did it, and the girl says because you were scared and I wasn't.
Nancy puts the pad down.
"Mike, this is good." She means it. "This is really good."
"It's not done yet."
"It doesn't matter. The scene with the drowning—that's real. People would read that and feel something."
"It's not journalism, though." He says it like an apology, like her opinion is the one that counts because she's the Wheeler who writes things that matter.
Nancy wants to say this matters more than anything I've written this year, but she doesn't, because that would mean admitting something she's not ready to admit yet. So she says, "Send me the next draft when it's ready. I mean it."
She drives back to Karen's house with the windows down and Mike's sentence stuck in her head. Because you were scared and I wasn't. El said something like that once, or maybe she didn't—maybe Mike wrote the version of El he needed to remember, the one who always had an answer.
Nancy's been writing about city councilmen who steal money. Important work. Verifiable, sourced, above the fold.
But Mike is in a cabin in Hawkins writing about a girl who saved the world, and nobody will ever be able to verify a word of it, and it's the truest thing Nancy has read in months.
She pulls into the driveway and sits there with the engine running.
There are stories in this town that no one is telling. Not the supernatural ones—those will stay buried, have to stay buried. But the other ones. The kids who came out of the pods and went back to school like nothing happened. The families who rebuilt. The teachers and coaches who showed up when no one else did.
Someone should be writing those down.
Nancy turns off the car and goes inside to help Karen with dinner.
Two weeks of thinking about Steve Harrington.
She runs into him at the grocery store on a Tuesday. He's buying vegetables—actual vegetables, like a real adult—and he's got dirt under his fingernails and he looks happy.
"Wheeler." He grins. "What are you doing here?"
"Holly's birthday. Extended trip."
"How's Boston?"
"Busy." She reaches for a tomato, realizes she's just holding it, puts it back. "Good. Busy. How's everything?"
"Good. House is almost done. Garden's coming in. Derek got a scholarship to baseball camp."
"That's amazing."
"He earned it." Steve's face softens when he talks about the kids. It always does. "They all work so hard. All of them."
Boston is waiting for her. City councilmen and corruption and paper trails. Important work.
But standing here, watching Steve talk about his kids with pride in his eyes, she wonders if there's another kind of important. The kind that happens in small towns. The kind that holds communities together.
"Is there a newspaper here?" she asks. "In Hawkins."
Steve blinks. "The Post closed years ago. Why?"
"Just thinking." She picks up another tomato. "Someone should tell Hawkins's stories."
"Is that your way of saying you want to move back?"
"No. I don't know. Maybe." She laughs. "I've been thinking. About what matters."
Steve looks at her for a long moment.
"Hawkins could use someone like you," he says. "Someone who asks hard questions."
"Hawkins has you."
"I teach sex ed and coach baseball." He grins. "Not exactly investigative journalism."
"Oh, come on. You protect people. You show up." Nancy meets his eyes. "That matters too."
They stand there in the produce aisle. The fluorescent lights hum overhead.
"How are Max and Lucas?" Nancy asks. "I heard they're still going strong."
"Yeah." Steve leans against the produce display. "Lucas graduated last month. Sports medicine. He's moving back to Hawkins, actually—gonna work with me and the other coaches. Local teams, injury prevention, that kind of thing."
"That's wonderful. And Max?"
"Teaching art at the middle school. Started this spring." Steve grins. "And she runs this skateboarding thing on weekends at the park. Teaching kids tricks, setting up ramps. It's pretty great."
"Sounds like they're both building something good."
"Yeah," Steve says. "They are."
"I should go," Nancy says. "Holly's waiting."
"Yeah. Of course."
She turns to leave. Stops.
Through the store window, she can see Steve's truck in the parking lot—a kid sitting in the passenger seat, waiting. The kid sees Steve through the glass and waves, face splitting into a grin.
Steve waves back, that easy smile on his face.
Nancy stops walking.
"Steve?"
"Yeah?"
"It's good to see you."
She's gone before he can respond, but the image stays with her all the way home.
Montauk — New Year's Eve, 1992
She brings Mark, a reporter from the paper. Nice guy. Smart. Good-looking. Three months together.
Nancy watches him talk to Jonathan about cameras and waits for something to click. It doesn't.
She keeps watching Steve.
He's in his usual corner, nursing a beer, laughing at something Dustin said. He looks good, more settled than she remembers, like he's finally comfortable in his own skin. The house has been good for him. Hawkins has been good for him.
Mark touches her arm. "You okay? You seem distracted."
"I'm fine. Just tired."
"We can leave early if you want."
"No, I—" She shakes her head. "I want to be here."
At midnight, she finds Steve on the deck.
It's becoming a tradition, she realizes. The two of them, this deck, this view.
"Hey," she says.
"Hey yourself." He takes a sip of his beer. "Mark seems nice."
"He is."
"Good." Steve looks out at the ocean. "You deserve nice."
Nancy doesn't know what to say. There's a tiredness in his voice she hasn't heard before—not exhaustion, something closer to resignation—and it makes her grip the railing.
"Steve—"
"Can I tell you something?" He's still not looking at her. "Something I've been thinking about for a while."
"Of course."
He takes a breath. "You know how I always said I wanted six kids? House full of noise, chaos, the whole thing?"
"I remember."
"Turns out—" He laughs, soft and surprised. "Turns out the number never mattered. I thought it was about quantity, right? About filling up space. But it wasn't."
"What was it about?"
Steve's quiet for a long time. The moonlight catches the water below them.
"It was about you, Nance." He's not looking at her anymore. "It was always—I mean, the six kids thing, right? I used to think that was the dream. The house, the noise, all of it. But it wasn't—like, the number wasn't the point. You know?" He runs a hand through his hair. "You were the point. You were always the point. And I just—I didn't know how to say that without sounding, like, completely insane, so I made it about kids and houses and—" He stops. "Window dressing. All of it."
Nancy's hand tightens on the railing.
"I'm not saying this to make you feel bad." He picks at the label on his bottle. "Or to pressure you. I just—I've been carrying this for years. And I'm trying to let it go. Build something good, with or without you. But I wanted you to know first."
"Steve—"
He steps forward, kisses her forehead. Gentle. Final.
"Happy New Year, Wheeler."
He walks back inside before she can say anything.
Nancy stands on the deck, alone, the cold wind whipping off the ocean.
You were the point.
Inside, the party goes on. Mark is probably looking for her. Her family is probably wondering where she went.
But Nancy stays on the deck, staring at the door Steve walked through.
Window dressing. What matters. All the years she's spent running from the thing she wanted most.
Boston — January 1993
She breaks up with Mark on New Year's Day.
They're at her apartment. He came over for brunch, and he's making coffee in her kitchen the way he always does—finding the mugs without asking, knowing where she keeps the sugar—and she knows if she waits for the right moment she'll never say it.
"I can't do this anymore."
Mark sets the mug down but doesn't turn around. "Is this about last night?"
"It's about a lot of things." Nancy folds her hands on the table. She's good at difficult conversations, conducts them for a living, but this one sits wrong in her mouth. "You deserve someone who's actually here. Not someone who's thinking about someone else."
He turns around then. Leans against the counter. "I figured," he says. "The way you look at him." A pause. "That stings, by the way. But I'd rather know."
"I didn't mean to—"
He sets down the mug. "Go get him, Wheeler."
The apartment is quiet after he leaves. Nancy sits at the table for a long time. The coffee he made her gets cold.
It should be that simple. Just go. Just tell Steve how she feels.
But Nancy's spent her whole life planning and strategizing, making sure she has all the angles covered before she makes a move.
She can't just show up. She needs to know what she's offering. What she wants.
So she spends January thinking.
February arrives, gray and cold. The monthly meetup is this weekend. Philly again.
Nancy books her train ticket. Then she cancels it.
She books it again.
What am I doing?
Robin's voice from a year ago: The question's kind of asking itself at this point, isn't it?
Mike. Finding peace at his waterfalls. Giving himself permission to try.
Steve. Building a house in Hawkins. Filling it with people who need him.
What do I want?
The answer comes slowly. Then all at once.
She wants to go home.
She wants to start something new—a paper, maybe, something Hawkins needs. Something that matters.
She wants to be close to her family. Watch Holly grow up. Support Mike's writing. Be there for the kids who survived.
And she wants Steve.
She's wanted Steve for years. She's just been too scared to admit it.
Nancy Wheeler, who's faced interdimensional monsters and survived, is terrified of a boy from Hawkins who loves her.
Enough.
She cancels her train ticket to Philly.
She drives instead. Ten hours, Hawkins-bound, the same route Steve takes every month in that ridiculous truck.
She packed one suitcase and left the rest. Told her editor she was taking a leave of absence, which wasn't exactly a lie—she just didn't mention the part where she wasn't coming back.
Somewhere around hour six, she stops rehearsing what she's going to say. By hour eight, she's not scared anymore—just tired and certain.
By hour nine, she's only driving. The highway narrows. The billboards thin out. Indiana farmland stretches flat in every direction, and Nancy Wheeler, who left this place the first chance she got, drives straight back into it.
Hawkins — February 1993
Steve doesn't go to the February meetup.
Robin calls, leaves a message: Where are you???
He calls back later: Sick. Sorry.
It's not exactly a lie. He's sick of pretending. Sick of watching Nancy with other men. Sick of hoping for something that's never going to happen.
He spends the weekend at the house instead. Saturday morning. Cold and gray.
He's in the backyard measuring garden beds when he hears a car pull up.
First thought: Robin.
Second thought: Dustin.
Third thought—
He walks around to the front of the house.
Nancy Wheeler is standing in his driveway.
"You didn't come." She looks tired. Like she drove ten hours with something heavy on her mind.
"I was sick."
"Robin said." Nancy's looking at the house: the porch he rebuilt, the windows he replaced, the garden boxes waiting for spring. "She also said you've been working on this for three years."
"It's not done."
"Steve." She turns to face him. "It's beautiful."
He doesn't know what to say.
"I broke up with Mark," Nancy says. "New Year's Day."
Steve stares at her.
"He was perfect on paper. And all I could think about was that stupid deck." She steps closer. "Because of you."
"Nancy—"
"I've been thinking. About Hawkins. About how there's no newspaper here. About Mike writing his stories. About Holly growing up. About all these kids who need someone to tell their stories."
She takes a breath.
"I want to come home. Start a paper here. Be close to my family." She reaches for his hand. "And I want to be with you. If you'll still have me."
Steve's brain is not working properly.
"You're serious."
"I've never been more serious about anything." Her eyes are bright. "I'm sorry it took me so long. I was scared. I kept telling myself we wanted different things, but that was just—I was running, Steve. From what I wanted."
"And what do you want?"
"This." She squeezes his hand. "You. A life that matters, with someone who matters."
Steve looks at her—Nancy Wheeler, standing in his driveway, offering him everything he's ever wanted.
"I've loved you since I was seventeen," he says.
"I know." She's crying now. "I'm sorry I made you wait."
"You're here now." He pulls her close. "That's what counts."
She kisses him.
It's nothing like the kisses they shared in high school—desperate and hungry and trying to prove something. This one tastes like cheap champagne and cold air and the last three years of waiting.
"I love you," she whispers against his lips. "Ten years, Harrington."
"You're saying it now." He holds her tighter. "That's enough."
Hawkins — New Year's Eve, 1998
Five years later.
The house on Maple Street is full of noise.
Dustin's arguing with Robin about something scientific while Vickie watches with the patient look of someone who's been here long enough to know when to just let it happen. Suzie's trying to follow along, notebook in hand, because even at New Year's she can't help being a physicist. Mike's showing his latest screenplay to Jonathan. He's been writing for years now, stories about kids who save the world, and one of them actually sold. Max and Lucas are in the kitchen, debating baby names; they're expecting in March. Lucas just got back from the JV basketball game, and Max has paint under her fingernails from her after-school art club. Will and David are on the couch, flipping through Jonathan's photo album from the year. Holly's helping Derek set up the sound system.
Joyce and Hopper are in Florida this year, Disney World, their first real vacation in decades. Joyce called yesterday, laughing so hard she could barely talk. Something about Hopper in Mickey ears and a near-incident with the teacup ride.
"Tell the kids to behave!" Hopper had yelled in the background. Then, quieter: "That includes Dustin."
Will and David are driving down to meet them after New Year's. "Mom's been talking about Space Mountain for six months," Will had told Dustin. "I think Hop's terrified."
"He's faced interdimensional predators, Soviet soldiers, and Joyce Byers when she's angry," Dustin said. "Space Mountain should be nothing."
"Yeah, but those didn't have height requirements."
And Steve's in the nursery, holding his daughter.
She's three months old. Dark hair like Nancy. Hazel eyes like him.
"Hey, little nugget," he whispers. "Ready for your first New Year's?"
She gurgles at him. He takes it as a yes.
Nancy appears in the doorway, camera in hand.
"The Hawkins Independent ran your story today," Steve says. "The one about the school board."
"I know. I'm getting angry letters already."
"That's how you know it's good."
She laughs, crosses to them, wraps her arms around Steve from behind. The three of them, standing in the nursery, looking out at the yard where snow is just beginning to fall.
"Six," Nancy says softly.
"What?"
"You've got more than six now." She kisses his shoulder. "Dustin, Mike, Max and Lucas, Will, Derek. And now her."
Steve looks at his daughter. At the family gathered downstairs. At the woman he loves.
He thinks about the empty house in Loch Nora where he grew up. The silence. The notes on the counter: Be back next week. Maybe. —Mom
This house is never empty. Never silent.
"Yeah," he says. "Seven nuggets."
"That's a terrible nickname."
"It's perfect and you know it."
Downstairs, someone starts the countdown.
Ten. Nine. Eight.
"I love you," Nancy says.
Seven. Six. Five.
"I love you too."
Four. Three. Two.
"Happy New Year, Harrington."
One.
He kisses her as the clock strikes midnight.
Steve holds his daughter close. The house is loud. The house is full.
He wouldn't change a thing.
— THE END —