From part 2 of the fic I’m working on. Wasn’t gonna share this, but I literally wrote it today and now @throttlegainwell brought up Lonnie and damn, great minds and all that. Anyway, it’s in rough shape and I gotta work it over, but this is to me the Lonnie of it all. And how it sits on Jonathan the heaviest.

“What’s going on with you and your mother?”

“Will?” He asks with a sigh.

“Jonathan…”

“Lonnie…he’s sick. Dying, if you believe him. My mother wants us to go see him. I refuse. And I told her not to tell Will. Let that prick die alone.”

There’s a hard and dark look on his face, one that chills her to the bone. She shivers subconsciously and Jonathan pulls her tighter against him.

“She said I was acting just like him. Which made me mad. But I didn’t back down. And when she asked me why I didn’t wanna see my dying father I snapped and admitted all the things that he did to us. The belt, the bruises. Even now, it’s like she refuses to really look at it. The horror of it all would melt her brain, so she just insists I’m making it up.”

“I think that’s because she wants to believe your childhood was like Will’s. And it wasn’t. For good and ill.”

Silence stretches between them and Nancy can feel him tapping his feet in a nervous fit.

“But I do think your mother is right. That choice should belong with Will. He’s old enough now.”

Another dark look crosses his face for an instant but is replaced with a resigned exhaustion.

“Yeah. It’s just, I dunno, I hate him. And they don’t. I mean, they do, but not like I do. It makes me angry. But also sad. Because it is like Lonnie, y'know? I’m like Lonnie.”

“Except it’s not like him at all. You’re trying to protect those you love. He could never. In the end, you’re nothing like him.”

“Why doesn’t she see what he really is, even after all this time?”

“Because as awful as he is, he gave her you and Will.”

(also just make them bi, just make them BI!!!)

Yeah I’m still writing it. Fitfully, but it’s there. The story ends with a knockdown, drag out Jancy fight that culminates in their reconciliation but here’s something that’s not that:

The walk back to the apartment is cold and longer than she thought. Jonathan holds an arm out for her on the sidewalk, expecting Nancy to sidle into him. To seek support from him. She will, just not yet. Not now. Instead she turns to another Byers, Will, and leans on him instead.

“Hi,” she subtly slurs against her brother’s boyfriend. Mike is ahead of them, in an animated discussion with Sandy and Laura.

“God, how drunk are you?” Will asks with a chuckle. He’s surprisingly sturdy, despite how frail he looks. She supposes that’s a Byers trait. They’d have to be made of sterner stuff with the childhood they had. Behind them, Jonathan brings up the rear, dragging her luggage, smiling sadly when Nancy turns to him. The last thing she wants to do is think of him as a child, the bruises on his face and the cause of them. Nancy shakes her head softly as she looks at Will.

“Not that bad,” she swears. And to an extent, it’s true.

“How’s mom and Hop?” Nancy asks.

Will glances at her and then turns away. It’s a familiar look to Nancy, a Byers boy not wanting to tell some truth. Where Jonathan is a tough cookie to crack, Will is easier.

“That bad?” She asks, leaning into him a little more, trying to squeeze the information out of this poor boy.

He sighs and looks back at his brother. “It’s not bad, just…tense. Especially with Jonathan.”

That almost makes Nancy stop in her tracks. But she’s just adept enough to keep her stride, pulling Will in even tighter to her.

“Jonathan? With Hop?”

“Not with him, really. With mom. They’re, I dunno, at loggerheads or something. She tries to speak on the phone with him and he’s not having it. I had to beg him to come back to Montauk for Christmas, and he only did for like two days before heading back on the train. It was tense the whole time.”

“Really?” The last thing she needed was a mystery to solve. But damn if this isn’t an intriguing one. The Byers family has always presented itself as a unit to the public. Nancy knows them well enough to see the lies at the edges of that. She’s seen the tension between all three of them, usually quick and resolved, but sometimes not.

The block stretches ahead of them, a cold wind whipping in their faces, her brother still deep in conversation with Laura and Sandy. Nancy spares another glance back at Jonathan, who’s trying his best not to look at them. Part of her feels guilty for leaving him alone, but the rest of her knows they’ll be together soon. For good and ill.

And the show follows up that idea by having her, in literally the next episode, murder three people in cold blood. Just shoots them dead and then smiles about it.

Season 5 Joyce isn't real. She can't hurt us. I mean she can, and she did, but she's doing her best. I mean, she's not doing her best at all, but she means well. I mean, she doesn't mean well, but she's still there. She's not there at all, but she's still Joyce.