Archive of Our Own ^beta

Robin hadn’t expected to start her Saturday night with Nancy Wheeler sobbing into her shoulder, but it fits in perfectly with the destruction of normality, of stability that the Upside Down cracking open had left Hawkins with. Just like the ash in the air, the uneasy stillness of Main street in the middle of summer, the constant rumbles of the earth prying itself open, she doesn’t think that she can fix whatever’s making Nancy feel like this. She wishes she could, she really really does. She wishes frantically that she was like El. That she could just fight what awful dreadful things are swirling around Nancy’s head right now.

Nancy should always be determined and passionate, but right now she just seems .. defeated. She’s smaller when she’s crying, the thinness of her bird-like arms, the gentle curve of her neck, the delicate bones in her wrists are all obvious. She feels like she would just crumble into dust if Robin wasn’t there to hold her together. She can feel a damp patch growing on her t-shirt, and her heart clenches in a way that - she’s not thinking about that right now.

Robin shifts her a little bit, so she can feel Nancy’s warm breath ghosting along her hairline, and squeezes her a little tighter. Her breath hitches and then Nancy just burrows in deeper. Wraps her arms around Robin with a surprising strength, turns and then just - settles in Robin’s lap. Like that’s normal, like Robin wasn’t having a fucking heart attack about Nancy Wheeler on top of her, the taller one for once.

This is so not the time to be thinking about how nicely Nancy’s thighs fit around her own, or how if she just tilted her head down a little, she could -. Nope, nope, nope, Robin thinks frantically, hands fluttering a little around her waist. Nancy’s not like that, you dumbfuck. Desperate to distract herself from her own thoughts, Robin says:

“Hey.” Robin’s trying so hard not to stare down at her, but when she feels Nancy’s head tilt back, her eyes are immediately drawn upward. Towards bloodshot doe eyes, her trembling upper lip, the creases in her chin as she tries not to cry. God, how can anyone be this pretty when they’re crying. She clears her throat a little, dry-mouthed and shaky:

“I know that it’s not really any of my business, and I totally understand if you don’t want to talk about it, like, at all. But, what happened?”

Just five minutes ago, She and Nancy had been watching Ferris Buhler’s Day Off, and both of them had been fine, or about as fine as they could be during the apocalypse. There had been a throw blanket and a bucket of slightly burnt popcorn between them. Then, Cameron had fallen in the pool. It started with a barely noticeable hitch in Nancy’s breathing that had escalated into full blown hyperventilating by the time Ferris had started slapping Cameron’s face.

Robin hadn’t known what to do at first. Nancy and her had talked about the Upside Down, what had happened in the Creel House, the empty lake bed beneath Lover’s Lake. But, this was something else. Something that Nancy hadn’t told her about (which could be a lot of things). So, Robin did the only thing that she could think of. She had touched Nancy on the arm gently, and they had ended up here.
She’s back in the moment as soon as she feels Nancy take a deep breath (Jesus, Mary and Joseph, Robin really was going to hell for being a huge creep when one of her best friends was having a mental breakdown).

“The pool reminded me of Barb.”

Robin’s face paled and her stomach dropped so quickly she’s surprised she didn’t throw up. Robin hadn’t really been friends with Barb when she had gone missing. But it had hit her hard, and had been even worse when they actually declared her dead. It took Robin over a year before she could think of Barb without crying.

Nancy was Barb’s best friend. And Robin had gleaned enough from the way Nancy never looked outside at Steve’s pool and from how she would start a joke and then choke on her own words, that Barb going missing was a paradigm shift for Nancy. An awful, gut-wrenching moment that had wrenched Nancy away from being a normal teenager, had changed her in ways that Robin is still puzzling through. It made her brave and protective over the kids, to the point where she would shoot Vecna in the chest. But it also made her distant, closed off from the rest of them in a way that Robin never thought she would breach.

But, here Nancy Wheeler is, being vulnerable in a way that makes Robin’s breath catch in her throat. In awe, but also in complete terror. Robin was a mess, Robin always always fucked up. If she ruins it now, she’s got the sense that Nancy will cut her out of her life completely. And that wasn’t acceptable.

She smooths a hand over Nancy’s curls, fingers catching in the slight tangles that always formed on humid days. She gently threads her hands through the knots, and teases them apart. Nancy trembles a little, and then collapses the rest of the way into Robin’s space. She keeps her hand moving, because she doesn’t trust herself not to fuck this up by talking. She accidentally scrapes her nails into the skin right above her ears and she freezes. But Nancy pushes into it, tilts her head so Robin’s hand trails down her cheek.

Robin has officially died, and is in some new fucked up reality. Her hand trembles where it’s curled around Nancy’s chin, and when she looks up… Robin never realized how long her eyelashes were, dark and clumped slightly with tears. Her eyes are bloodshot, and the bags under her eyes are as dark as day-old bruises, but Robin hasn’t seen a person prettier than Nancy Wheeler in her entire life. A little bit of crying isn’t going to change that.

They stare at each other for whole minutes, Robin’s other hand rubbing small circles into Nancy’s back as Cameron wrecks his father’s Ferrari. Robin feels like she’s close to breaking something soon, as she watches the way the screen illuminates the red undertones in Nancy’s hair.

“That’s surprising,” She says, low enough that Robin struggles to catch what she’s saying.

“What?” She asks unintelligently. It makes Nancy laugh, this hysterical little giggle that breaks her heart.

“You always have something to say,” Nancy says, “But you haven’t said anything yet.”

Robin pauses, feeling like this is some sort of trap, like whatever her answer is here will have larger ramifications than she understands. She rolls her tongue over the back of her teeth a couple of times, letting herself think.

“What do you want me to say?” Is what she ends up going with, “I- I can’t joke about Barb. I can barely mention her on a good day.” She doesn’t need to say out loud that today isn’t a good day - Nancy already knows. “She’s -”

Robin can’t finish her sentence, so she lets it hang unfinished in the scant inches of air between them. Nancy pulls back a bit, looks her straight in the eyes.

“I forgot that she was your friend too.” She says, “I’m sorry.”

“It’s really okay-”

“It’s not,” Nancy interrupts, looking frustrated and so small that Robin has the intense urge to bundle her up and protect from the outside world, even though she knows that Nancy can protect herself, has protected herself “Nothing’s okay right now.”

Robin doesn’t know what kind of spirit - demon or guardian angel - possesses her in that moment. She’s leaning forward before she can even realize it, and wow, she can see the blue flecks in Nancy’s eyes from this close. Her breath ghosts over Robin’s lips, making her shiver even though it’s the warmest thing she’s felt in ages. They hovering so close that Robin’s entire vision is Nancy, that she’s the only thing she can think about.

“I’m serious,” She breathes, “It’s okay. We can hold onto memories of her together. I think she’d like that.”

That’s when Nancy kisses her. It’s nothing like Robin imagined a kiss would feel like. Their lips are dry, and she can feel the way they gently catch on each other as Nancy shifts in her lap again. She presses against Robin insistently, Nancy’s heat and warmth and the floral scnt of her perfume surrounding her completely. She can feel her heartbeat racing, and it’s only after her chest starts seizing that she realizes that she’s been holding her breath the entire time.

Robin breaks away with a gasp, tilts her head back so she can just breathe for a second. The movie’s still going on in the background, and she distantly recognizes that Cameron just sent his father’s Ferrari through the glass windows of his family’s house. She feels the press of Nancy’s mouth on her collarbone, the way her mouth opens and - oh god - the swipe of her tongue against flushed skin that pulls a strangled gasp out of her mouth. Robin must be dreaming. That’s really the only explanation for this.
She tilts her head back down again, and tries to moves her hand from where she’s squeezing Nancy’s waist (when did that happen? She can’t remember anything). Nancy’s hand press down on it when she tries to move it though, and she breaks away from Robin’s neck long enough to say, low and demanding:

“Don’t.”

So Robin doesn’t move her hand away. She experimentally squeezes again, and Nancy hums appreciatively into her shoulder. Robin figures that she will tell her to stop if she needs to, and slowly rucks up her blouse until she can feel warm, soft skin. Nancy takes this time to start pushing Robin’s shirt further down one shoulder so she can continue her way down Robin’s collarbone. Robin’s hand reaches the edge of Nancy’s bra and she drops it immediately to the safe skin of her waist when Nancy freezes. They both pull back: Robin further into the body heat warmed leather of the couch, and Nancy until she was halfway off of Robin’s lap

“I’m sorry,” Nancy says, sounding genuinely apologetic, “I want to but -”

“Nancy, it’s okay,” Robin starts and then laughs, completely disbelieving, “It’s really, really okay. I didn’t realize that you liked …”

“Yeah, well,” Nancy says, eyes shining brightly, the puffiness under them from crying already mostly done, “I didn’t really either.”

“Okay,” Robin says, feeling giddy. Nancy liked girls. Her crush, which she thought was to remain forever unrequited, just kissed her. Robin feels like she can do anything now. The horrors of the Upside Down are nothing, all of her previous weights and concerns feel paperlight right now. The horror of Barb’s death is less painful now. She can do this. “We can figure it out together then.”

She reaches for Nancy’s hand and holds it between her own. Her fingers are cold. Nancy smiles.

“Together.” She says, and then squeezes Robin’s bottom hand. They watch the rest of the movie with an easy silence, Nancy’s head on Robin’s shoulder. The outside world is distant. It’s just the two of them now.