Teenage romance is already difficult enough to navigate.
But when the one you love doesn't love you back? That's the worst pain of all.
STRANGER THINGS | NANCY WHEELER
seasons 1-2
┌─────── •✧• ───────┐ CHAPTER NINE aaahh!!! real monsters └─────── •✧• ───────┘
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
( the flea and the acrobat, pt. ii )
• °:.☆ . ₊°• ☆ . ° .• °:. *₊ ° . ☆
THE TIME SPENT between the three teenagers is surprisingly amicable. Even with the gravity of their situation pressing onto their shoulders, jokes pass easily among them, probably as a side effect of trying to get their minds off the reason they're in the woods in the first place.
Dead leaves coat the ground in a thick blanket that crunches under their feet with every step. It will make sneaking up on the monster impossible — especially with Nancy and Jonathan, who have all the silent grace of two boars traipsing through the forest, managing to trample every twig in existence. Laura has never known two people to walk so loudly in her life.
But it's okay. In fact, she prefers it like this. She can pretend that they're going for an innocent walk instead of trying to locate a horrifying beast that may have abducted their loved ones. The less they act like they're hunting, the less anxiety she feels clawing up her throat.
"You never said what I was saying," Nancy pipes up.
"What?" Jonathan asks.
"Yesterday. You thought I was saying something and that's why you took my picture."
Nancy hadn't told Laura how she'd found out about Jonathan's photos or what picture she's referring to. Curiosity gets the better of her.
"What picture?" she asks.
She'd thought it was an innocent enough inquiry, but the tips of Jonathan's ears go red, and not from the cold breeze that turns their extremities numb. He avoids answering and focuses on Nancy's words instead.
"Oh, uh... I don't know. My guess... I saw this girl, you know, trying to be someone else. But for that moment... it was like you were alone, or you thought you were. And, you know, you could just be yourself."
Laura doesn't remember a time when Nancy was alone that night. It must have been after she'd started drinking. She winces, hoping that Jonathan hadn't gotten a photo of that. With the lights on in the house and the curtains open, it would have been like a fish bowl— visible for anyone to see from the outside.
When did she get so dependent on other people to keep her secrets?
Nancy stares at the ground in front of her for a few steps before shaking her head. "That is such bullshit."
Jonathan pauses in surprise. "Wh — What?"
Nancy stops and spins around, her face taut with indignation. Laura grimaces. Their time together had been going so well, but she can already sense the sharp turn it's about to take due to Jonathan's hard-hitting truth.
