Chapter Text
Nancy was wrapping Jonathan’s hand. She was looking straight at him, and, despite everything, there was a kind of peace settled in the room. Then it was broken by a banging at the door.
“Jonathan! Are you there, man? It’s Steve!”
Steve? Steve Harrington? What the hell?
Jonathan stared at Nancy, who was reflecting his shock with her own wide eyes.
“I just want to talk!”
Why should Jonathan believe that? He’d beaten Steve up only a few hours ago, driven to a kind of rage he’d never felt before. He’d probably humiliated Steve in front of his friends. Surely Steve was just coming to his house to get his revenge. Maybe he had a gun, or something.
Nancy made to move towards the door, but Jonathan, horrified, grabbed her wrist to stop her. “What are you doing? he hissed.
“I’ll get rid of him,” Nancy said, assured, clearly believing that Steve Harrington really was here just ‘to talk’.
And anyway, it would probably be safer for Nancy to answer the door anyway. Even if Steve had come to attack Jonathan or something, he wouldn’t hurt Nancy.
“Just don’t let him in,” Jonathan warned quietly. With the Christmas lights strung everywhere and the weapons strewn around the room… without context the whole situation was looking pretty sketchy.
Nancy nodded, then walked to the door, hands shaking slightly. She unlocked it slowly, pulling it open a fraction.
“Nancy? What?”
“You need to go,” Nancy said firmly, trying to close the door. Steve pushed back.
“No no, wait, I’m not trying to start anything.” He didn’t seem to have a gun, at least, which was something. And he seemed sincere. Which was… odd. Why would Steve come to his house? To apologise? Jonathan found that hard to believe. Steve Harrington was an asshole. And definitely not the type of person to come all the way to Jonathan’s house just to apologise.
“I don’t care about that. You need to go.”
“Nancy, look, I… I messed up, okay? I messed up. Just let me- hey, what happened to your hand?”
Uh oh.
“It’s nothing,” Nancy said, brushing it off, pulling her wrapped hand out of sight - a moment too late. “It was an accident.”
“Did he… did he do this to you.” Oh god, Steve sounded angry now. Jonathan tried to feel annoyed that he’d basically just been accused of domestic abuse. Steve had experienced Jonathan being pretty physically violent earlier today after all.
“Steve, wait-“ The door was pushed open, and Nancy stumbled back, Steve crashing inside after her. Jonathan didn’t hesitate, moving closer to them both, and grabbing Steve. He pushed down a shameful flicker of pride as he saw how messed up the other guys face was. Jonathan sure knew how to fight.
“You need to leave,” Jonathan said firmly, trying to push him out. Steve wasn’t moving, instead taking in the wreck of the living room.
“What is all of this?” Yeah, without context it looked pretty bad. Even with context it looked bad. “Is that gasoline?”
“Look, man, I’m not asking…” Jonathan kept trying to push Steve out, but Steve was pushing back, and he was strong.
“What’s going on here?”
“Get out.
“Jonathan,” Nancy cut in.
“Look, man…”
“Jonathan!” Nancy said again, louder. Jonathan turned to face her. She was staring at the wall with the crudely painted alphabet. “The lights.”
They were glowing dimly. Jonathan’s heart skipped a beat. He grabbed the nail bat, ignoring Steve, as Nancy raised the gun, her hands now perfectly steady.
Steve was still taking, but Jonathan turned it out, looking around the room to try and see where the monster would be coming from.
But seconds past, and nothing happened. The lights continued to flicker weakly, bright colours dancing across the wallpaper: blue and yellow.
“Where… where is it?” Nancy demanded, turning in circles, pointing her gun out in front of her.
“Easy with that,” Steve said, moving back when it pointed at him. Nancy said something back, but Jonathan had gone back to the lights. They weren’t all flicking, just a few here and there, moving along the strands. Still dimly flicking on and off. Not aggressive flashing, like he had assumed it would look like when the monster arrived. But instead soft, almost deliberate movement.
And suddenly the pieces all slotted into place in Jonathan’s head.
“Will?”
Nancy and Steve went silent behind him.
“Will, are you there?”
“What’s happening?” Steve asked, “Isn’t your brother…?”
“Jonathan what’s going on?” Nancy asked, stepping to stand beside him, looking at the wall of lights. “You don’t think…”
“My mom kept saying that Will was talking to her through the lights,” Jonathan explained, watching the dim colours fade in and out. “I think this is what she meant.”
“You’ve lost your mind,” Steve said flatly. He had come closer, standing close to Jonathan’s other side, looking at the lights in disbelief. “Will’s dead.”
“He’s not dead,” Jonathan muttered, only half thinking about whether he should even be telling Steve that. The other guy turned to give him a strange look, but before he could say anything Nancy called out Will’s name.
“Will? Will! Are you here?”
“Talk to us!” Jonathan said, looking at the lights.
“What the hell. What the…” Slowly, slowly, the moving lights faded, and a single red bulb lit up, brighter than all the others, underneath the pained C.
“Yes, good,” Nancy said, “Keep going, Will.”
Another light flashed on, replacing the first, this time lighting up the letter O.
“C O,” Jonathan repeated, focusing on the wall, not even daring to let his focus slip. And to think he’d called his mom crazy.
“What is happening?” Steve asked, backing away from them all. Neither Jonathan or Nancy answered. The next light came on, under the M.
“Keep going Will.”
The next letter was an I. Then the N. Then the G was lit up with a small green bulb.
“Coming,” Jonathan spelled out, Nancy echoing him. “Coming.”
“The monster?” Nancy asked. “The monster’s coming?”
“He’s warning us,” Jonathan realised. He raised his voice. From what he understood, Will could hear them from wherever he was. The upside down, as the kids had called it. “Will, it’s okay. We have a plan.”
“Hold up, monster? Did you say monster? What are you talking about? What the hell is going on?”
“Steve you need to go,” Nancy snapped, voice much firmer than it had been before. “I’m serious.”
“Why were the lights doing that?”
“Steve! Go!”
“Nancy, what is going on here?”
Jonathan was about to step in - he could force Steve out somehow, even if it meant beating him up again - when Nancy raised her gun. Jonathan stepped back automatically. There was a kind of wild fire in her eyes that scared him a little. She pointed it at Steve, and he stumbled back, shocked.
“What?” he shouted.
“Get out, or I’ll shoot,” Nancy threatened. Jonathan had no idea if she really would or not, but he doubted Steve would want to take the risk. He certainly wouldn’t. And once Steve was gone they could focus on what they were really here to do - capture and kill the monster.
Thinking of the monster… were those lights flashing? Was that Will again?
No. This was harsh, bright flashes, not the deliberacy of Will’s communication. This was something else.
This was the monster.
“Nancy!” he said urgently, but she was still focused on Steve.
“I’m gonna count to three.”
“Wait wait wait, Nancy, hold on.”
“One…”
“Nancy!” Jonathan shouted again, louder, as the entire far end of the living room lit up in bright, garish beams.
Nancy whipped around. “Is that…”
The ceiling tore open.
A humanoid being dropped out, mottled white skin stretched tight over it’s body, looming taller than them all. The three of them stared in silence.
Then the monster opened it’s tapered head to reveal an array of petal shaped flaps, each lined with teeth. It roared, and every cell in Jonathan’s body rang alarm bells of fear.
A gunshot ran out, and Jonathan saw Nancy firing at the monster, completely fearless. Jesus Christ, how was this the same Nancy Wheeler that he’d known from the start of Sophomore year? She shot a few times, but it didn’t slow the monster at all, and it advanced towards them, arms outstretched.
Nancy and Jonathan seemed to remember the trap at the exact same moment. Nancy took off down the hallway, and Jonathan ran after her. He grabbed Steve as he went - he hated the guy, but he wasn’t going to leave him to the mercy of the monster. Jonathan wasn’t a complete asshole.
He then, of course, instantly let go as he realised that he was fucking holding Steve Harrington’s hand.
“Jump,” Jonathan called over his shoulder, as the three of them leapt over the bear trap in the hallway and crashed into Will’s room.
“Oh my god oh my god,” Steve was saying.
“Shut up,” Jonathan and Nancy snapped in unison, straining to hear the monster moving down the hallway. Nancy had her gun, Jonathan still had the bat, but if the trap failed and it crashed through the door, they were all screwed.
But the monster didn’t seem to be doing anything. Jonathan listened hard, but he couldn’t hear it moving at all.
“What’s happening?” Nancy hissed. Jonathan shrugged. Nancy started to move towards the door, but Jonathan pushed her behind him.
“Let me go first.” He pushed the door to Will’s room open slowly, stepping out into the hallway. The empty hallway. With the empty bear trap. Shit. Shit shit shit.
The living room was deserted. “Where did it go?” Nancy asked, looking around in confusion. Jonathan didn’t have an answer for her. “Is it dead?”
“This is crazy. This is crazy. This is crazy.” Steve was repeating the same words, seemly out of his mind. Which was understandable, Jonathan guessed. It was a lot to take in.
Then Steve grabbed the phone - to call who, Jonathan didn’t know - but Nancy grabbed it out of his hand, smashing it into the wall. Well, that was a waste of a phone. They’d only had that for a couple days, since their other one short circuited.
“It’s going to come back,” Nancy pointed out. “So you need to leave. Now.” Steve stared at Nancy, then shifted his gaze to something slightly above her shoulder.
“The… the lights.”
Jonathan and Nancy both turned to look at the wall again. Indeed, the lights were flashing. But not the flashing of the monster. “Will?”
“Where is it?” Nancy demanded, moving to the wall. “Will, is the monster dead? Or did it go back to the upside down?”
“The upside down?” Steve spluttered. “What?”
An orange bulb lit up under the letter A. Jonathan and Nancy repeated it out loud as the lights moved, lighting up the letters L, I, V and E.
“Alive,” Jonathan said, “The monster’s alive.”
“So it’s back in the upside down,” Nancy said, nodding as though this made sense. “It made another gate.”
“What is the upside down?” Steve demanded. Jonathan and Nancy finally turned to face him.
“Just leave,” Jonathan said flatly. He really couldn’t deal with Steve Harrington in that moment. Not with everything else going on.
“Wait, no, I’m not just gonna leave-“
“Yes you are,” Nancy said coldly, “You don’t know what’s going on here. Just get out now.” The ‘while you can’ was implied. Steve hesitated, looking at Nancy, then glancing at Jonathan. Then he sighed, and finally turned to leave.
The door slammed behind him, and Jonathan and Nancy were alone again.
“Jesus Christ,” Nancy muttered, shaking her head. “What are the odds he shows up right while this is happening?”
Jonathan didn’t answer. He was staring at the spot where the demogorgon had come from, ripping a gate into the ceiling, just like the one that had been in the forest - the one that Nancy had gone into. Something was dancing at the edge of Jonathan’s thoughts, and he tried to latch onto it.
“I’ll talk to him, tomorrow,” Nancy was saying, “Just to make sure he keeps his mouth shut. I won’t tell him about Eleven though, of course.”
“Nancy?”
“Yeah?”
“What if we followed the demogorgon into the upside down?” Jonathan had blurted it out without much thought, but the idea made complete sense to him. Judging by the long silence in response, that feeling was not shared by Nancy.
“I’m sorry, what?”
“We can go in, get Will, and bring him back.”
“Jonathan!” Nancy grabbed his shoulders, forcing him to face her. “I went in one of those gates last night. Trust me, you don’t want to go there.”
“Will’s there,” Jonathan argued, pulling away. His little brother had spent the last week in that hellhole, and Jonathan was going to do everything in his power to try to make sure he didn’t have to spend another minute there.”
“But Hopper and Joyce have gone after him,” Nancy pleaded, “That’s the plan. They’re going to get Will.”
“So why’s he still here?” Jonathan pointed out. “Hopper and my mom should have gotten here by now. So maybe something went wrong - maybe they weren’t allowed through the gate.”
“That’s a pretty big if.”
“My brother is trapped with the monster!” Jonathan yelled, gesturing with the bat at the spot were it had crawled from the ceiling. “We need to get him out! Now!”
“Okay,” Nancy said, alarmed at his outburst.
“Wouldn’t you do the same for Mike!”
“Okay! Okay, Jonathan!” Her eyes were wide, but set with determination. “How’re we gonna do this?”
“We’re gonna trap the monster, right?” Jonathan said, “Well, instead of burning it, what if we wait for it to open another gate to escape?”
“Okay, yeah. And then one of us goes through, gets Will, and the other one can attract the monster again, and get it to open another gate to come back through.”
“And we’ll use that gate to get Will out.” Jonathan finished.
“It’s risky,” Nancy said, “But you’re right. We can’t just leave Will in there with the monster and hope that Hopper shows up in time.”
“So now we just gotta wait until-“
It was uncanny how perfectly timed the lights started to flash again. Nancy and Jonathan automatically pressed in together in the centre of the room, spinning back to back, both scanning every inch of the space for a gate opening. It was so hard to see anything, though, with the flashing colours.
Jonathan kept the bat raised in front of him, ready to strike. The lights suddenly all blinked out, submerging them into darkness. Jonathan and Nancy automatically pressed closer. Everything seemed still, and Jonathan’s heart was beating out of his chest. He strained to listen, trying to hear where the monster was. It had to be somewhere…
The monster’s head appeared two inches from Jonathan’s, and his entire soul left his body. He was too caught off guard to do anything but yell as the monster’s body crashed into his, pinning him down on the floor. The bat rolled from his hands.
Jonathan was suddenly taken back to a week ago, when his father held him up against the wall. But the monster was so much stronger. It pressed down on Jonathan, hands gripping his shoulders. Jonathan struggled, but couldn’t even get it to move an inch; he was completely overpowered. The monster’s head opened to reveal the rows and rows of teeth, inching closer and closer to Jonathan’s face. He could almost feel them sinking into his skin. This was it. This was how he was gonna die.
A gunshot rang out. Then another. The monster looked up, distracted, and tumbled off of Jonathan. Jonathan gasped, heart pounding, completely unable to move.
After a moment, he stumbled back to his feet, caught sight of Nancy through the darkness, shooting an empty gun uselessly, backing away into the wall behind her. Jonathan could do nothing to help her.
No. No, there had to be something. He could grab the coffee table, maybe, hit the monster from behind? Or just throw himself at it, go for the element of surprise, and hopefully give Nancy enough time to think of something better to do.
But Jonathan didn’t have the chance to do anything before a figure leapt in between the monster and Nancy, wielding Jonathan’s dropped bat.
“Steve!” Nancy cried.
Steve?
He started to beat the monster, forcing it back into the hallway. His hits were good, precise, and from the faint outlines of them both that Jonathan could make out in the darkness, Steve was dominating. Holy shit.
It was only a matter of time before the monster retaliated, but before that could happen, Jonathan heard the clink of it getting stuck in the trap.
“It’s in the trap,” Nancy and Jonathan chorused in unison, meeting right next to Steve. The monster loomed ahead of them all, shrieking in displeasure, but was unable to do anything with the way its leg was stuck.
Steve dropped the bat, stumbled back slightly. “Please tell me there was a second part to this plan,” he said.
“We wait,” Nancy said grimly, “For it to open a gate to escape.”
“Huh?”
“We’re gonna follow it through,” Jonathan explained, feeling that Steve had earned some kind of explanation.
“Steve, why are you…” Jonathan turned back around, away from the thrashing monster, to see Nancy stepping towards Steve. His hand was pressed over his stomach. Uh oh. That couldn’t mean…
Nancy tugged his arm away. “Steve you’re bleeding!” she gasped.
“It’s not deep,” Steve reassured her, pulling away. “I’m fine.”
Behind them both, the alphabet wall lit up again, a rainbow of colours smashing through the blackness.
“Monster or Will?” Steve asked. Jonathan didn’t know. The lights seemed more widespread and bright than they had before with Will, but how could it not be him? The monster was in their world, a few feet away.
“Will?” Jonathan asked cautiously.
The lights seemed to burn brighter in response, then all went out at once. Then a single yellow bulb flicked on again, below the letter T.
The T was followed by a W. Then, heartstoppingly, an O.
“Two?” Nancy repeated. “Two?”
“That doesn’t mean…” Steve looked back at the trapped monster. “There’s not a second one of those, right?” Jonathan and Nancy were silent. “Right?”
“I don’t-“ Nancy froze, cutting herself off. “Oh my god, Jonathan! The monster… it’s attracted to blood.”
“Yeah? Oh.” Steve was bleeding. “Oh shit.”
A loud shriek suddenly sounded from the far wall, making them all jump, and Nancy cry out in shock. A pale, mottled monster, identical to its companion, shot from the darkness, the faint glow of a red gate visible just behind it.
It moved much faster than it’s counterpart, and lunged on Steve, ignoring Nancy, who was stood right by him. Steve didn’t stand a chance; he didn’t even have the chance to react before the monster was dragging him backwards and into the gate.
“No no no,” Nancy screamed, lurching forwards a split second too late. She landed on the floor, right where the gate had been. Where it had closed over a second earlier. Faster, so much faster than the other monster.
Jonathan was frozen in shock, hardly able to even compute what had just happened.
“Steve! Steve!” Nancy was yelling, brandishing her gun like it wasn’t out of bullets. “Oh my god, no. Steve, are you there?”
Jonathan stared at her. He didn’t know what to do. He had the horrible, terrible feeling that this had all gone so, so wrong. He and Nancy weren’t supposed to be here. They were supposed to be at the school, looking after the kids. Now what had they done?
Had Jonathan just killed the most popular guy in Hawkings High? Holy shit. Holy shit.
“Jonathan!” Nancy screamed, running up to him. “What do we do? He was bleeding! It’s going to eat him like it ate Barb!”
No no no, oh God, Jonathan did not want that mental image.
“We still need to get Will,” he said vaguely, still in shock. He looked back round at the first demogorgon, and nearly threw up in shock. It had opened it’s own gate at some point in their distraction, and was working on getting its leg free to go through.
“Fuck, I’m going in!” Jonathan decided. “Stay out here, Nancy.” Jonathan ran into the hallway just as the monster got free, throwing itself through the gate with one last growl.
“Jonathan!” Nancy shouted. Jonathan looked back, about to yell at her that they didn’t have time to argue, but she just held up the bat. “Catch!”
He caught it on the handle - thank god, those nails were pretty damn sharp - and, without another thought, crawled through the rapidly shrinking gate.
It was sticky, and had a weird membrane sealing it over, but Jonathan pushed through, crawling away from the darkness of his house and into the red-tinged, vine-covered upside down.