Work Text:
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October 1989
Emerson College, Boston
***
Part 1: The Puzzle
Nancy Wheeler was the most assertive and straight-forward girl April had ever met. Paradoxically, Nancy was the most mysterious girl April had ever met. Probably the most mysterious person.
It often came down to subject matter.
Example A: If you asked Nancy about her major, she could talk your ear off about her classes in journalism and women’s studies, the latest techniques and theorists she was learning about, or her recent 4,000 word investigative piece on a local insurance company defrauding its customers which she wrote for an assignment but it was so impressive her professor helped her get it published in the literal Boston Herald.
She would delight in expounding on which professors were blowing her mind every lecture and why and which ones were full of themselves and so out of touch with modern journalism it was all she could do to keep from storming out of class every time.
Example B: If you asked Nancy where she was from, she would tell you, a small town in Indiana.
Then she would change the subject in a way that seemed perfectly natural if you weren’t paying attention. April had known her since freshman year and had seen this maneuver in action multiple times.
They met in their first semester when they both started working for the Beacon. Freshmen, if accepted into the newspaper’s ranks, were typically given grunt work with occasional opportunities to write fluff pieces on social events or intramural sports. Nancy had thrown herself into the work with the aggressive efficiency of someone with too much confidence and a chip on their shoulder. It surprised absolutely no one that she was promoted to news editor when the position opened in the middle of her sophomore year, even though the paper’s leadership had very much been a “boy’s club” for most of its existence.
Meanwhile, April made a reputation for herself by being exceptionally good at creating crossword puzzles.
Everyone at the Beacon, even Nancy, would begrudgingly admit that the weekly crossword was the most popular part of the paper. Bored students working their way through it during Wednesday lectures, their folded copies of the Beacon half-hidden under notebooks or just brazenly spread out on their desks, was such a common sight that the paper once published a tongue-in-cheek exposé about it. Any article printed on the same page was sure to get the most readership, making it a highly coveted spot and great for ad sales as well.
Because of this, April offered a lot of value to the paper, and now in her junior year she had been appointed entertainment co-editor. Technically. The co- part was pretty critical given how little editing she actually did.
April had spent her entire life in Rochester, New York in a perfect little middle class home she was dying to leave. She had always known she was smart—really smart—and she had never tried particularly hard at anything because she did not have to. High school had been both laughably easy and boring enough to keep her in a persistent depression for three and a half years before she graduated early. Getting into Emerson had been a breeze, even as the first in her family to go to college; it was simply a matter of April deciding to attend.
Nancy was different because she was smart and she tried. There was no point in the semester when she wasn’t up to her ears in coursework, pulling late nights at the paper’s dingy office off-campus, and somehow still making time to help with the news segments at EIV. April knew for a fact that Nancy’s GPA was higher than her own; she was a likely candidate for class valedictorian next year.
And despite all this, Nancy managed to be a supportive friend, her presence never central but steady and reliable in their various overlapping social groups.
Because they lived in the same dormitory, April knew that Nancy spoke to her mother for 30 minutes every week on the payphone in the lobby.
She also knew that Nancy sometimes hand-wrote letters that were multiple pages long, requiring extra stamps on the envelopes, the addresses on which she just so happened to keep covered up at all times before dropping them off at the campus post office. When she received replies, she tucked them into her bag right away so she could read them privately later.
Nancy clearly came from some money, but would never brag about it. She published scathing take-downs of “Reaganism” in the Beacon at every opportunity. She surreptitiously covered dinner or coffee for Janice, another friend from the paper who was at Emerson on scholarship, never making a big deal out of it.
And Nancy notoriously did not date, the occasional hook-up with mediocre boys notwithstanding. She was working her ass off at Emerson to get her BA with zero interest in an MRS.
Last year, while on a rare late night out, April and a few other friends coaxed Nancy to join them at a house party. The party died down in the early morning hours to a handful of sleepy drunk people listening to cassettes, sipping stale beer from a nearly kicked keg, and divulging embarrassing stories about old high school sweethearts. April remorsefully shared about an incident at age 15 when she accidentally gave a valentine to her boyfriend’s twin brother, prompting said boyfriend to never speak to her again.
“I needed glasses, okay??” April called above the laughter, lifting the frames off her face as proof.
She felt pleasantly warm when she looked at Nancy and saw she was giggling, her eyes sparkling and both hands over her mouth as if she could not stop. April would gladly embarrass herself all day if it meant she got to see Nancy laugh like that.
“What about you, Wheeler?” she asked, nudging the other girl’s foot with her own.
Nancy took a couple more seconds to stifle her laughter, and when she looked up at the group her smile turned grim. “I’d rather not talk about it,” she said simply.
Janice grabbed one of Nancy’s hands, her words a little slurred as she asked earnestly, “Did you get your heart broken?”
And April realized Nancy was drunk, really drunk, despite how steadily she held herself, because she replied, “I did most of the heart-breaking, actually.”
Everyone in their little group called out, “oooh,” one person clapping Nancy on the back and congratulating her while Janice patted Nancy’s head and announced, “They didn’t deserve you!”
The conversation moved on, but April’s mind could not. Because she had known Nancy for nearly two years at that point, and that one sentence was the most personal thing she had ever heard her share with anyone.
Nancy Wheeler was… puzzling. And April had an unbearable crush on her.
***
Part 2: The Conspiracy
It was close to midnight on a Tuesday when April, Nancy, Janice, and a few other straggling members of the Beacon staff clinked beers together in the paper’s main office. They had pulled rolling chairs from several workstations to form a messy circle in a corner of the room.
“I can’t believe we got that shit to the printer at 11:29,” sighed André, a senior and one of the paper’s managing editors. He took a swig of beer before casting an arm over his eyes dramatically. “Ralph looked like he was going to punch me when I ran in there.”
April laughed and held up her own beer in a salute. “Look, it sucked, but we all worked really hard and we made the deadline. The people of Emerson will not be deprived of news this week. Great job, team!” She grinned, fully expecting the groans from her friends and neatly dodging a crumpled up draft page that was tossed at her. April had helped, a little, but she had mostly stuck around to offer moral support. AKA, crack jokes and be a bit of a nuisance to distract Nancy before she committed a murder.
They had been preparing to drop off the week’s final spread at the printer earlier that evening when their editor-in-chief, Christopher Warren Blake the Third, had stomped in and announced they needed to swap the big cover story on missing students (a Wheeler original investigation, and one that April knew Nancy had spent nearly a month working on) with the coverage of the men’s basketball team on page 12.
And no, they could not move it next to the crossword instead.
Nancy was understandably outraged, and the rest of the staff around at that point were too because suddenly everyone’s evening plans were canceled so they could spend a few frantic hours rearranging the paper’s entire layout instead. Christopher, who was generally an asshole but pretty good at his job, stonewalled them regarding any explanation and left grumbling to himself as soon as the new version was finished.
Everyone was laughing now, exhaustion and relief making the whole thing funnier in hindsight. Except, April noticed immediately, for Nancy. She at least no longer had that pinched look on her face, like she was barely holding back a righteous tirade, which was a good sign.
Instead, her expression was one that April relished seeing on her classmates’ faces when they worked through one of her puzzles: thoughtful. Like she was on the verge of figuring something out.
“Someone made Christopher do that,” Nancy said - not a question. Her direct pronouncement cut through the giddiness in the room.
“Think it’s a conspiracy, Wheeler?” André asked lightly. He clearly meant it as a joke, but everyone was quiet waiting for her answer. Nancy was the most suspicious reporter on staff and not even the most innocent-looking stone left unturned was her default policy. She had been right enough times that she was rarely teased about it anymore.
Instead of answering directly, she wondered out loud, “Why move the story? If someone wanted to keep this quiet, why not cut it altogether?” She set her barely touched beer down and stood up. “Three students have gone missing since last semester, everyone’s talking about it already, and squashing the story would look like a cover-up. I think they didn’t want to hide it, but they did want to make it seem unimportant.”
“Nancy, who is they?” April asked, her voice low and a little awed.
Nancy’s sharp eyes met April’s. Her lips were pressed tight as if to keep herself from saying more. Finally, she said, “I think we should go. Let’s walk back in a group.”
There were some snickers and attempts to lighten the mood again, but no one disagreed as they gathered coats and bags and headed out into the dark together.
***
Part 3: The Crush
It was freezing out, and on a late weeknight in this part of town the streets were empty. Beyond the buzzy pools of light cast by streetlights, the city April had called home for more than two years felt unusually dark and unknowable.
Most of the group was working hard to appear unbothered - laughing, yawning, and shoving each other as they made their way back to the main part of campus.
April was silent, shadowing a few steps behind Nancy with her fists shoved in her coat pockets for warmth.
She was feeling more than a little unnerved. It was rare for her to take anything seriously, not when she had spent years perfecting her role in her friend groups as the ‘silly’ one, often playing dumb for laughs to ensure they would keep her around. Because no one could tolerate a girl who was smarter than everyone and a smartass.
But Nancy’s gravity drew her in.
Nancy was also quiet, her hands steady and gripping the strap of her large bookbag. She brought that thing everywhere, stuffed with newspapers, books on feminist theory, and whatever else she was researching at the library that week. It looked heavy enough to tip her over although she always appeared to lift it easily. She kept looking back to make sure April was still there, or maybe to look for something behind her.
They reached the main campus green where the lights over the sidewalks still felt too few and far between, but they were decked with friendly flags in Emerson purple which took some of the edge off. Typically they would split up here - the apartment André inexplicably rented with several members of the Emerson “Treble Makers” was closest to where the others lived at Piano Row, while April and Nancy’s dorm was about a ten-minute walk in the other direction.
“Do you want us to walk you home first?” André asked, not looking enthusiastic about the idea. His desire to be a gentleman was clearly at war with his desire to get the hell home.
April exchanged a glance with Nancy, and the other girl’s expression was unreadable. “We’ll be okay,” she found herself saying. Because how could they not be?
The others waved, Janice taking the time for a proper goodnight and a request to call over to Piano Row when they got home, and the group set off across the green still giggling and joking around until the dark and quiet of the eerie night swallowed them up.
“Come on,” Nancy urged, already several yards ahead on their path home. April rushed to catch up with her.
Some small part of her brain noted that the streetlight closest to them had begun flickering, and that part of her brain logged the observation as unimportant.
It’s possible that what happened next took only a matter of seconds.
Something slammed into April with so much force she fell forward face-first, just barely catching herself in time, the impact scraping through her stockings and a couple layers of skin on both her knees and hands. She cried out in shock and pain, and before she could even consider righting herself it was on her again. Arms that felt like cold iron bars wrapped around her, trapping her own at her sides. A heaving chest pressed into her back and it was emitting terrifying hissing sounds with each breath. She was trapped, and the awful hissing drew closer to her ear. Sudden pain bloomed across the right side of her neck like frozen needles.
She didn’t scream, but she felt her brain come to the frantic, logical conclusion that she was being stabbed to death by a serial killer.
Years ago, when April had decided on Emerson out of her not insignificant pile of acceptance letters, she remembered her mother’s forehead wrinkling with worry. What about the Boston Strangler? April had rolled her eyes with peak teenage disgust. Mom, that was like 20 years ago.
She did not say, Mom, I have to go to Boston because no one here sees me because this place is suffocating me because I’m gay.
Now she would never get to tell her mom that, never see her reaction—never, inevitably, get to reject her back. Never even tell her friends, where the outcomes were so much less certain. Never tell Nancy…
She hoped Nancy got away. Nancy would avenge her death. Nancy wouldn’t stop until the killer’s face was exposed on the front page of the Globe. It might even be her big break, and there were worse things to die for than Nancy’s dreams coming true.
There was an explosion of light and heat. April’s attacker shrieked more like an animal than a human, or maybe more like something else altogether. Suddenly she was free.
Nancy grabbed one of her arms, forcibly yanked her to her feet, and yelled, “Run!”
After being dragged the first few steps, April’s body got its shit together enough to keep pace with Nancy, who was moving at a surprising clip for someone April had never seen go near any sporting activity she wasn’t writing about for the paper.
Nancy’s bag was gone, likely abandoned for speed, and April squinted to confirm that what Nancy now held tightly in one hand was in fact… a white spray can? With the cap missing. And… yes, that was Farrah Fawcett’s gleaming smile bouncing along with the swinging of Nancy’s arms.
April couldn’t see if there was a lighter in Nancy’s other hand, but she easily put together what had happened: Nancy Wheeler had used hairspray to blowtorch a serial killer.
“Oh my god,” April said out loud, breathless from all the fear and running and something else.
What a weird time to fall completely in love.
Without thinking—maybe because all of her senses were on high alert, or maybe due to some previously undiscovered good instinct for danger—April grabbed Nancy around the middle and pulled them both off the path through a thick line of bushes.
She was flushed and sweaty and she willed her breaths to slow down, or at least stop wheezing so damn loudly. Her neck throbbed and she realized blood was pooling under her wool coat, wet and cold.
Nancy, who was also sweating and out of breath and somehow still in April’s arms, looked like she was going to say something. Maybe ask, what the hell are you doing? April silently put a finger to Nancy’s lips (which were berry pink and unbelievably soft) and shook her head.
She remembered belatedly that her hands were dirty and bleeding and it was definitely rude to touch someone’s mouth like that, but Nancy gripped her wrist and nodded. Then she reached into her coat pocket. For one outlandish moment April envisioned Nancy pulling out a gun, which would be astronomically unexpected for her diminutive classmate, but really useful right now.
Instead, she pulled out April’s glasses, which Nancy carefully settled back onto her face.
April hadn’t even noticed her glasses falling off when she was first hit, or Nancy picking them up. That warmth bloomed in her chest again, like when she made Nancy laugh, and it drove away some of the fear. Nancy’s hands were still close, still touching her, and April was mildly disappointed to realize it was because Nancy was tugging up her coat collar to press it gently against the side of her neck.
Now that April could see her face more clearly, she noticed that Nancy did not look afraid; she looked pissed off.
The nearest streetlight flickered; this time April’s brain logged it as very important, and she felt her heart rate speed up accordingly. Seconds later, a grating voice called out, “What the hell happened to you? Looked like a flamethrower or something.”
Through the branches of their hiding spot, which suddenly felt completely inadequate, they could see two figures emerge from the gloom. The one who had spoken was tall and lanky, with long, pale hair pulled back in a greasy ponytail. His freckled skin appeared gray, almost translucent, in the flickering light.
“It wasn’t a fucking flamethrower, Danny, this is a school,” the second figure growled, “Why would someone have a flamethrower?” A woman stepped into the light, revealing that her right arm and at least half of her face were shockingly, severely burned, her dirty clothes half-charred. She appeared to be in some pain, but not the correct amount of pain for someone with injuries like that.
April’s hand flew up to cover her own mouth, but she couldn’t stop herself from making one small, frightened sound.
Shit!
With 20/20 vision restored, April witnessed the following with perfect clarity:
1) Both figures turned sharply in her and Nancy’s direction and let out a low hiss, the same one April had heard before. (Then the hiss grew louder into something so much worse, an unearthly shrieking that echoed around them in a way that couldn’t possibly come from just two people, from any people.)
and
2) The man opened his mouth. It gaped wide, impossibly wide, splitting apart as if sliced by an invisible knife into five gnashing protrusions until his face looked like a grotesque tulip lined with dripping razors.
Up until this point, April had contextualized what was happening within a worldview where she had always known there was a slim but not zero chance she might one day experience danger of this magnitude. And that danger could potentially be really bad—Boston Strangler-level bad, even—but it would be human. Tragically, terrifyingly normal.
These were monsters.
This was… new information.
Huh.
She couldn’t move.
“Run! Run! ” Nancy screamed, “Get the hell out of here!”
But Nancy wasn’t running. Nancy was crouched as if bracing for impact, holding up the hairspray again, and a lighter.
She was calm as she let forth a burst of hellfire.
***
Part 4: The Heroes
April didn’t have to be a women’s studies major to know that two men sweeping in to rescue them like they were damsels in distress sucked. But she was too busy nearly throwing up from relief to offer this commentary to their unexpected saviors.
Nancy fended their attackers off once more with her makeshift flamethrower (it was kind of a flamethrower!) and then these two chuckleheads came out of nowhere and intercepted. One guy had gone after the charred lady with a metal baseball bat while the other took on tulip-mouth with his bare hands. It was a short fight that ended when tulip-mouth sunk some of those awful rows of teeth into his opponent’s shoulder; baseball-bat-guy yelled out, turning to help, and both monsters fled.
“Dammit, Harrington,” the injured guy grumbled, barely glancing down at the bloody mess on his shoulder, “I’ve been bitten by worse. You let them get away!” The guy with the bat smacked him on his unhurt arm, and then grabbed him to get a closer look at the wound.
Both guys appeared to be about April and Nancy’s age, maybe a little older. April didn't know what she would have expected from people who were clearly experienced monster-fighters, but she would probably not have guessed they’d look so… normal.
They did, however, wear comically different styles of dress, like they had walked out of a modern reboot of the Odd Couple; one guy in fitted track pants and a striped polo, his light brown hair neatly coiffed despite just (April had to keep circling back to this in her brain) fighting a literal monster, and the other in a leather vest and dark jeans with silver chains hanging off them, his dark hair long and wild around his face.
Nancy’s spray can clattered to the ground.
April found herself becoming physically unfrozen but the coherence of her thoughts was quickly deteriorating. She wondered if Nancy would thank their heroes for their bravery and good timing. It made her a little sick to imagine either of these guys, both annoyingly handsome in their own way, sweeping Nancy off her feet. Or maybe that sick feeling was blood loss…?
It didn’t matter because Nancy said something much more sensible than thank you:
“What the FUCK, Steve??”
“Nancy,” batguy—Steve—started to say, but Nancy was in full righteous rage mode now, casting him back a few steps with a withering glare alone. April had seen this version of Nancy bring pig-headed male classmates twice her size to tears; it was a beautiful thing.
Nancy turned her fury to the other guy. “Eddie… you’re alive?” she demanded.
Eddie held up both hands, which sported an assortment of heavy-looking silver rings, in surrender. “In a manner of speaking,” he replied. When he smiled sheepishly, April noticed his teeth looked too sharp.
She looked back to Nancy Wheeler, torcher of monsters, beautiful goddess of rage and fire in her full glory… who promptly sat down on the ground and burst into tears.
“You idiots,” Nancy cried, “both of you are fucking idiots!” and then she was sobbing and laughing at the same time.
It was like a burst of highly flammable hairspray, but with feelings. Maybe ones that had been held in for years. All of Nancy’s carefully answered questions—talking about herself without ever actually talking about herself, her diligent overturning of injustices from the typewriter in her dorm room, fighting tooth and nail for recognition from men who weren’t worth one tenth of her, barely attending parties or doing other stupid, fun college kid shit because she was always studying, always writing, always working... Nancy was angry often, and determined always. When did she let herself feel anything else?
The appearance of these two was like a dam breaking.
The idiots in question both dropped to the ground, wrapping Nancy in a hug from either side. “I’m sorry, Nance, I’m sorry,” one of them—Steve—babbled. “I was really trying to respect your wishes. We had no idea these guys were attacking students here, I promise I would have told you. I’m so sorry.”
Eddie said nothing except a quiet, “Sorry, Wheeler,” and he pulled both Steve and Nancy closer until all three of their heads were pressed lightly together.
April hovered awkwardly a few feet away, not wanting to intrude but feeling woozy and desperately wanting to point out that it was well past midnight and there were still monsters around. The sheer amount of what she didn’t know felt like a growing, gaping pit in her chest.
“Our friends,” she found herself saying, startling herself along with the trio. She pointed toward the other end of campus, “They went that way, to Boylston Street. They could be—”
“I’m on it,” said Eddie. He gave the others’ shoulders a final squeeze, then set off jogging.
“Dude, you’re hurt!” Steve yelled after him.
“You can kiss it better later!” Eddie called back.
Steve made a kissy face and threw up a middle finger before helping Nancy to her feet. “He’ll be fine, he heals really fast,” he assured her.
These guys are gay, April noted dully, just before her knees gave out. She heard Nancy yell her name.
***
Part 5: The A-Team
Thankfully, Steve and Nancy both managed to catch April before she could do more damage to her busted knees. She never fully lost consciousness and together they all shuffled to Eddie’s van, which Steve swore was nearby and contained “first aid stuff.”
Nancy had one arm around April’s back, her other hand holding the scratchy and now blood-soaked fabric of April’s coat against her neck with steady pressure. April’s eyes rolled over her friend’s face, settling on her berry lips, and she half-listened to an utterly incomprehensible exchange between her and this Steve Harrington.
“Who knows?” Nancy asked. Her voice was strained, either with worry for April’s condition or with re-building rage. Possibly both.
“So far?" Steve asked. Nancy snorted. "Thought it was just me and Eddie,” he answered. He sounded tired, but he felt strong and warm carrying most of April’s weight. Annoying. “Turns out El and Will were working it from a different angle. And Jonathan, you know he barely lets them out of his sight. Oh, and Erica.”
“Erica? She's 14!"
"Yeah, can't imagine a 14-year-old getting mixed up in this," Steve said dryly, before his tone turned more contrite. “It’s a long story.”
“And, what?” Nancy pressed on, “They’re possessed? Like Mind Flayer possessed?”
“No... This is something else.”
“He’s not… Vecna—Henry—is he alive? Is he back?”
“No. Will and El both say no, they’ve been putting feelers out with their ESP shit. It’s something else.”
“And Eddie—?” Nancy began to ask. April very much wanted to know what was up with Eddie, what was up with any of these people, but instead she blurted out:
“Vampires.”
Steve stopped walking. “How the hell did you know that?” he demanded. He nearly dropped his metal bat (which had some goop on it from the recent skirmish that may or may not actually have been blood) and repositioned himself so that April was still well supported. It was nice considering he seemed pretty shocked.
“Vampires??” Nancy echoed, almost laughing.
April nodded solemnly, “I’m like, exceptionally good at figuring things out. Also, I’ve read ‘Interview With the Vampire’ three times.”
Steve's response was an exasperated nod that seemed to communicate, of course.
They reached the van, which turned out to be a beat up, wood-paneled beast that was double parked and miraculously un-towed. Steve helped April and Nancy crawl inside the back through one of the wide swinging doors and then firmly shut it behind all of them.
It was a bit crowded with stuff in there and too dark to make more than educated guesses as to what it all was—at minimum there were some bulky duffel bags, a couple more baseball bats, an empty pizza box, and what April thought might be the top half of a harpoon. Just casually laying there among the rest of it. Steve grabbed it and stuffed it out of the way so that April could sit down without harpooning herself, which was quite hospitable.
The chilly air and distant city sounds were both muffled in here, and Nancy was holding her hand. Her breathing was slow and sure. April finally felt safe for the first time since Nancy set her beer down earlier that night.
Steve produced a flashlight and a giant bag that looked equipped for surgery on an active battlefield more than it looked like a first aid kit and began unrolling bandages.
“Vampire is just a working name,” Steve said.
Nancy scoffed, “You know it’s going to stick.”
Steve balanced the flashlight on the headrest of the driver’s seat, and he and Nancy managed to get the wound on April’s neck clean with rubbing alcohol and about 20 cotton wipes, tossing them aside one by one in a bloody pile on the van’s floor. It stung like hell.
Steve explained calmly that there were a lot of incisions but they weren’t very deep due to the size and shape of the vampire’s teeth on all those horrible parts of their mouths. As long as they missed your major arteries, you had a really good chance of not dying from one bite.
“Yay,” April said.
Once her neck was wrapped in gauze, they set to work cleaning the scrapes on her hands and knees, which were also painful but in a different way. The bite wounds may have been mostly surface level, but they felt deep, and cold.
Nancy, who seemed assured that April was taken care of, or that she was at least not in immediate danger of dying, got down to business. “I have a lead,” she told Steve. “My story on the missing students, they bumped it in tomorrow’s paper.”
Steve finished sticking a final bandage on the side of April’s palm and frowned at both girls, clearly not following. “Okay...?”
“Someone told our editor to do it,” Nancy continued. “Someone who didn’t want the story getting too much attention.” And there was April’s favorite expression again, glowing in the weird angle of the flashlight. A look of utter satisfaction, of clues falling into place.
One of the van’s rear doors opened from the outside and the glow from the streetlights came pouring in with freezing air. All three of them screamed at a comically high pitch. Steve lunged forward, gripping his bat even though there was no room to swing it in here.
But it was just Eddie, hair still wild and teeth still too sharp, looking utterly pleased with himself as Steve cursed him out. He sat down with his legs dangling out the back and angled himself to grin at them. “All the humans are accounted for,” he reported, “and we have one less vampire to worry about. What’s next? We gonna shake down this editor?”
April briefly wondered how he could have heard them talking about that from outside. Maybe he had been waiting just to scare them, which was a pretty twisted thing to do to people who had spent the evening running from vampires. (She had another thought—her stupid brain always did—but she forced herself to focus.)
She sat up straighter and offered, “I know where his apartment is. Christopher’s, I mean. Our editor. And he’s probably home because it’s Tuesday and it’s the middle of the freaking night.”
“Great!” Eddie cheered. He was already climbing through the back. He clambered across Steve’s lap (Steve complained, but fondly), edged past the girls with much greater politeness, and pulled himself into the driver’s seat up front. He easily could have just stepped out and gotten in through the driver’s side door, but after spending all of two minutes in his company April suspected that Eddie’s preference was to make a scene wherever possible.
The van's engine roared to life after two false starts, and April called over it for Eddie to head straight for six blocks and then take a left. Then she leaned back on a lumpy duffel bag and exhaled like a deflating balloon.
“Fuck,” she said.
“Yeah,” Steve chuckled.
He was staring at Nancy. April was sure that, whatever their deal was, there was a lot more that needed to be said between them.
But right now, Nancy was staring at her. Even in the dark, April could see that Nancy didn’t look angry anymore. She wasn’t a rage goddess, or an angel of justice, or any of the oversized poetics April’s lovesick little heart produced in excess. She just looked like a girl who was sweaty, and tired, and had been through too much.
“I want to help,” April said to her. Nancy couldn’t know it, but it was the most serious promise April had ever given. She could almost imagine herself as a knight pledging fealty. But that wasn’t it. When she said it, she meant, I want to know you. I want you to know me.
Besides, now that it turned out monsters were real, a group of hot people with weapons seemed like a sensible bunch to keep around.
Steve rolled his eyes at April’s pronouncement and ran a hand anxiously through his hair, saying with zero sarcasm, “Of course you do.”
And Nancy scooted closer to her, gripped one of April's bandaged hands in both of hers, and said, “Okay.”