Chapter Text
Nancy has always appreciated the curve of a woman’s waist and hips, the softness of a woman’s lips when she speaks, the way a woman would flutter her eyelashes when she was interested in someone.
Not in a weird way- everyone does that. Every girl she knows talks constantly about how cute their friend looked in that cocktail dress on Friday, or how their friend is absolutely bitchin’ today. It’s normal. Sometimes she even thinks about having s-e-x with a girl, but that’s completely ordinary, not anything off the beaten path. Par for the course.
When she was twelve she asked Mallory if she ever thought about that stuff, and sure, Mallory said ew, what are you, a dyke? But Mallory was also a stuck-up bitch who didn’t even let David Gallagher kiss her on the cheek. So she figured it was normal, and Mallory was just a bitch.
It only gets a little borderline when she finds herself admiring the way a particular woman looks- the way Susan held her first cigarette all delicate in between her blush-pink painted fingers, the way Adelaide’s nose curved in profile, the way May’s boobs looked in her low-cut shirt. She always figured it was just jealousy, though- she’s not a lesbian, or anything. She likes guys. She likes their broad shoulders and their defined faces and she’s always tended towards the more feminine guys, sure, but there’s a difference between a feminine guy and a girl.
And Angie Bierwald said that you’re supposed to hate someone when you’re jealous of them, so the fluttering in her stomach when Angie’s eyes were on her was hatred. That was what it was. She hated Susan, she hated Adelaide, and she hated May- because May wore low-cut tops like a slut.
One person she hates, right now, is Robin. She doesn’t know why, because Robin doesn’t have much she’s jealous over. Sure, Robin is more carefree, more spirited, less of a priss, but that doesn’t explain why her freckles entrance Nancy and why she feels like she’s going to throw up when Robin leans over the counter and Nancy can smell Robin’s perfume, mingled with what smells like Steve’s cologne.
She’s jealous of Robin, she thinks, because Robin is clearly dating Steve, everyone can tell.
Fortuitously, she ends up stepping into Family Video on a drenched Sunday morning. The town is painted monochrome, shades of blue-grey. It’s all very saturated with melodrama, how she hugs her coat tightly to her shivering frame and how the water runs off her hair in rivulets. Off to peep at her unrequited love and his betrothed, rapping with white knuckles against the laminate countertop of the video store.
“Hey, Nance, what’s up?” Steve says.
She shivers, whether from cold or the nickname, she can’t tell.
“Just returning this movie. Uh-” she flips it over, reading the title, “the Labyrinth.”
Nancy doesn’t know why she’s trying to be amicable, especially when Robin is positively leering over her boyfriend’s shoulder, expression infuriatingly pleasant. It doesn’t help that Robin is so beautiful that it makes it hard to hate her.
“Oh, neat. David Bowie is hot as hell in that one,” Steve swipes the movie away from her, “you looking to rent anything else?”
No, she wants to say, I don’t want to spend any more time with you or your girlfriend. But she does want to stay, is the thing, she wants to spend as much time with him as possible.
Robin catches her eye, and Nancy feels her body warm up.
Open communication was a thing that Nancy and Steve had set up after the second coming of the demogorgons, even though they weren’t dating anymore, because if they wanted to be friends, they needed to talk. Open communication is, of course, hard, but if she’s having such strong feelings for him again, well. She needs to talk to him about it. Even though she doesn’t want to break Steve and Robin up, she definitely does.
She’s been feeling illicit lately. Coy. Like she wants to have an affair with the secretary, be a homewrecker. It’s a new feeling entirely, and she consciously tries to reject it, but god does she want Robin to whisk her away and then divorce her husband and buy a house in Souther- wait.
Strange thought she just had there.
“Earth to Nancy. You wanna rent something else?”
“Uh, nah, I’m good. But um- hey, Steve,” he looks up from where he’s rewinding tapes, “you have a lunch break?”
“I’m off at noon, actually. So, yeah.”
“Could we meet up at Sandy’s, quarter til one?”
“Sure,” Steve shrugs.