You’ve known Nancy for almost your entire life.

From scraped knees in her backyard to sleepovers filled with whispered secrets, to growing into teenagers who were suddenly forced to face monsters no one should have to believe in, you’ve been at each other’s side through everything. The Upside Down, the Demogorgon, the nights spent shaking on her bedroom floor after you both realized the world was bigger and darker than anyone ever warned you about.

Some bonds are forged through childhood and yours was forged through survival. And maybe that’s why it’s always been different with Nancy. Why the air shifts when she walks into the room, why she looks at you sometimes like she’s reading your mind—not in a creepy way, but like she knows your heartbeat by memory. Like she sees the things you’re scared to say out loud before you even form the words.

She’s always been smart, sharp, observant. But with you, it’s something else. It’s softness and awareness. Something she’s never said out loud but lingers in the space between breaths when she’s close to you. You don’t know she’s in love with you, well, not really.

Not in the way she thinks about you late at night, lying awake with her notebook open beside her. Not in the way she never quite stops glancing at you during missions, as if watching you is the only thing keeping her grounded.

Tonight, you’re at her house again, sitting on the edge of her bed while she stands across the room, pretending to organize papers for the next town meeting. She’s fidgeting (unusual for Nancy), who is normally all precision and purpose. Every few seconds her eyes flick toward you, like she’s trying to gauge what you’re thinking.

The lamp casts a warm glow over her face, highlighting the soft tension in her jaw, the way her fingers hover over a stack of documents without actually moving them. You know her well enough to know something’s on her mind and you also know her well enough to recognize when she’s trying desperately not to say it.

Finally, Nancy exhales, the kind of breath that sounds like she’s been holding it for days. She crosses the room, sits beside you; close enough that her knee brushes yours, and for a moment she forgets how to speak. You feel her reach for you before she even moves, the air charged with a familiar, unspoken question.

She swallows, eyes locking onto yours with a fierce kind of vulnerability she rarely lets anyone see. “You always know what I’m thinking,” she says quietly, almost in awe. “It’s like… you’re inside my head, and I can’t turn it off.” Her fingers twitch like she wants to take your hand but stops herself, unsure, terrified of crossing a boundary she’s imagined but you’ve never actually drawn.

“I don’t know when that started, but it hasn’t stopped.” You feel the weight of her confession even in the half-formed words she doesn’t say. Nancy doesn’t ramble, she doesn’t fumble. But around you? She’s undone.

Wide open in a way she swears she isn’t with anyone else. Maybe she’s been in love with you longer than she’ll ever admit and maybe she thinks she’s still hiding it.

But right now, in the quiet calm of her bedroom, it feels like she’s reading your thoughts and you’re reading hers, the lines between you blurring the way they always do: natural, inevitable, frighteningly intimate.

And you realize, Nancy doesn’t just see you. She knows you.