Archive of Our Own

One of the first things Robin noticed about Nancy Wheeler was that she was neat as a pin. 

She noticed it way back in Freshman year, as a matter of fact. One seat behind and one row to the left of her in Mr. Rafferty’s science class, Robin’s aimless attention just so happened to land on Nancy’s desk one day. She curiously watched Nancy, ever the dutiful student, jot down every word in perfect penmanship, curly and precise across the blue lines of her notebook pages. Only breaking her pace to swap out her pen between the two highlighters resting along the top of her desk, sharply marking streaks of blue and yellow across the paper. Robin recalled smirking to herself as she glanced back down at her own notes, scrawled in chicken scratch with more cartoonish doodles spilling inwards from the margins than actual information on the page. And anyway, she could never remember what the teacher had been droning on and on about that day, or what chalk diagram he was gesturing to on the board behind him. But she recalled clear as day how much she marveled at Nancy Wheeler’s meticulous note taking. 

These days, Robin knew quite a bit more about her. An intrepid investigator, cool as a cucumber under unimaginable pressure, a thorough planner, and perhaps most surprisingly, a perfect shot. But all she could think about as her toes curled into the periwinkle carpet on the floor of Nancy’s bedroom was how neat and tidy it was. Sure, the wicker shelves were crammed with tapes and beauty products Robin couldn’t identify, but methodically crammed, stacked carefully. Her bed was made, its pastel comforter pulled taut and smooth. Her peach bedside lamp was accompanied by a framed photo, a porcelain cat, and a frilly tissue box all standing in a row. Shit, even her posters were framed, including good ole Tom Cruise still grinning at Robin from across the room. 

“Robin?” 

Her wandering eyes snapped to Nancy, standing at an open dresser drawer with a furrowed brow and a pile of clothes in her outstretched hand. 

“Right, sorry. Thanks! I’ll just… go over here,” she muttered, grabbing the pajamas and scurrying over to the far corner to change. Facing the wall, she swapped out her sweaty t-shirt for a soft cotton one and a pair of sleep shorts. She stretched her limbs outwards and sighed, working out the stiffness of sitting in the Wheeler’s basement all night. A place she found herself more often than not these days, if she wasn’t wandering the halls of Steve’s empty house. Their motley crew assembled when they could, trying to plan something, anything, but spring bled into summer and Max remained comatose and Vecna dormant. Hard to track down a demon you can’t see or hear in a dimension where the only door was now guarded by the US cavalry. The military compound they had made of downtown Hawkins had those Mall Russians looking like boy scouts. 

“I figured you’d prefer those,” Nancy piped up from across the bed, once again drawing Robin back to earth. She turned to find Nancy now in a pink and white striped set of button down pajamas. She caught Robin’s gaze on the way back from her once over, tugging at her own lapel as she added, “Instead of this. It’s super girly, I know.” 

A smile tugged at the corner of Robin’s mouth. Cute. Prissy as always but…cute. 

“What are you staring at?” 

“Nothing! Sorry, um,” Robin sputtered, shaking her head and looking anywhere but at Nancy’s growing smirk as she pulled a series of little clips from her curls. She fumbled with the covers until she came up with something to say, landing on, “Your room is just so neat. Everything has a place, like a doll house.” 

Snorting, Nancy pulled down the comforter on her side of the bed and slid in far more gracefully. 

“I guess so. I mean, my Mom keeps it pretty clean mostly. I hate that she comes in here, but she agreed to just make the bed and only touch things she can see,” she explained, with a touch of fondness. 

“Yeah, probably better that she doesn’t discover your secret artillery cabinet beneath your bed,” Robin quipped. 

Nancy hummed in faux seriousness and agreed, “Yeah, it’ll be hard to come up with an after school activity to justify the flamethrower.” 

“Wait, you have a flamethrower under there?” Robin started, whipping her head around to stare alarmingly at her bedfellow.

“God no,” Nancy assured her, cheek landing on her pillowcase as she faced Robin’s wide eyes. Although, a smirk wormed its way across her lips and she narrowed her eyes as she mused, “Well, not yet at least.” 

A joke far too dark to be in good taste, but it sent the two of them into a tizzy nonetheless. The melodic sound of Nancy’s laughter smacked a grin on Robin’s face, that was until Nancy’s foot grazed her bare calf. Accidentally of course, and only for a second, but it was enough to tense up Robin’s entire body. Because Nancy didn’t know, about Robin that is, about her…proclivities and this bed was smaller than she thought. Why had she agreed to stay the night? She could have gone home with Steve, or maybe she could pretend to get sick in the bathroom and insist on walking home. Although Nancy would probably insist on driving, and then she might have to puke in the car to sell her story. God. For the time being, she tried to play off her stricken expression as a long stretch of her legs, which turned out to feel quite nice after being curled up on the basement couch for hours. 

Peering over to her left, Robin found Nancy clearly unaffected by any of it. She merely leaned over to switch off the lamp, throwing the room into darkness. 

Nancy did sigh, though. Deeply. Robin should say something, probably. Maybe the movie made her upset? Close Encounters of the Third Kind was a bonehead choice, thanks a lot Mike. 

Inhaling as quietly as she could, Robin tossed out into the inky black of Nancy’s room, “That movie kinda freaking you out, huh? It was a stupid choice, I should have made them pick something else–” 

“Not really. It was…kind of comforting?” Nancy told her, and Robin could hear the smile in the lilt of her voice. “It was nice to watch something strange and horrible happen to someone else for a change. Is that weird?” 

“No, that sounds like a perfectly normal thing to feel after everything you’ve seen,” Robin figured, wiggling her feet beneath the blanket and feeling the polyester fiber drag along the tips of her toes. “I mean, a little messed up, but…” 

“Shut up,” Nancy chortled, giving Robin's ribs a gentle elbow. Robin tried and failed to not to feel triumphant at another earned laugh from Nancy. It was just Nancy. Nance. Mike’s sister. Whatever. 

Shaking her head slightly, Robin offered more seriously this time, “I get it, though. Like you can pretend you’re not cursed, that this shit happens to everyone, all the time. A typical Tuesday.” 

“I don’t know. After that movie, maybe it’s just Indiana that’s cursed,” Nancy joked, and it was Robin’s turn to chuckle. 

“Yeah, maybe that’s it,” she played along, turning just enough to catch Nancy’s profile silhouetted against the silver moonlight of the waning moon. The tuft of curly bangs and the swoop of her angular nose pointed up at the blank ceiling. Her finger twitched against her thigh, itching to trace it and the thought felt almost criminal. Another shake of her head to chase it off.

“I’ve, um, been meaning to ask you, by the way,” Nancy started up again, “who’s Vickie?” 

Robin felt her muscles go rigid once again, save for her throat which audibly gulped. Shit. Shit. Shit. 

“Uh, Vick–uh, who?” she tried, her traitorous voice cracking towards the end. 

Nancy had none of that, barrelling onwards, “I just heard you and Steve talking about her in the kitchen tonight. Sounded like you were nervous to ask her something, and then he told you to compliment her hair, which sounded like… I just want you to know you can talk to me and I’ll be much better help than Steve, at least, with… whatever it is. I mean, we are friends, aren’t we?”

To punctuate her point, Nancy turned to face Robin with her final question. Half her face now cast in the misty light, and boy, those eyes were blue as they held Robin hostage there on the softest pillow she’d ever laid on in her life. Robin had watched Nancy direct that assured stare at quite a few people who all buckled within seconds, and now she understood why as the words came spilling out of her own throat. 

“Vickie is a girl I sort of…like,” Robin blurted out. 

There it was, no easier the second time she had to say it. Maybe her eyes were still adjusting to the dark, but she watched Nancy blink, once, then twice, as if Robin had simply just told her the weather. Clear skies with a chance of toxic floating spores in the afternoon. But other than that just blank. Another beat, and the air returned to Robin’s lungs. 

“A girl I’m trying to date, I mean,” Robin clarified, although Nancy was smarter than drugged up Steve. Obviously that’s what she meant. Now she was just insulting her, shit, shit.

“Trying?” Nancy finally said, with a mocking, growing smile. 

The response took a minute to get past the wall of panic around Robin’s brain, but eventually, it landed. Oh, screw you Nancy Wheeler.

Robin choked out an incredulous laugh and fired back snidely, “Yeah, well, I’ve been a little preoccupied.” 

“You don’t say,” Nancy deadpanned, bearing a shit eating grin and a raised brow. 

A swell of relief bubbled up from Robin’s chest and they both fell into another spell of laughter, girlish and impish and the sort of shared revelry that Robin hadn’t felt in a long time. For a moment, she felt like a normal girl at a normal sleepover on a normal street with nothing to worry about but what lipgloss she’d wear the next day. Wistfully, obliviously, painfully normal. 

As their mirth fizzled out into a quiet hum in her chest, they fell back onto their respective pillows, eyes to the cream colored plaster again. 

“Alright, well, what about you, huh? What’s going on with you and Steve? Or was it Jonathan?” Robin prodded her, taunting her just the same. 

“Yeah, yeah, whatever,” Nancy waved her off, but taking it on the chin. Another sigh, and Robin peeked over at her to catch her fingers fussing with a seam atop the comforter. Too much, maybe. They didn’t know each other that well, she supposed. 

More gently this time, Robin asked, “I was just kidding, but… is there something going on?”  

Silence for a beat, and then another jolt of blue as Nancy eyed her right back. 

“Honestly?” she offered.

“I just told you probably the biggest secret of my whole entire life, so it’s only fair,” Robin reasoned, and a breathy laugh escaped Nancy’s lips. 

Barely a sound, but Robin’s swelling heart still counted it. 

“I don’t know how I feel, that’s the honest truth,” Nancy confessed, dropping to just above a whisper. “Not about which one of them I should… or any of that. Our lives have just become so serious now, you know? Who I date or whatever just feels so stupid. I’m not really worried about my mess of a love life at all.” 

Robin nodded slowly and frowned, proclaiming, “Nancy Wheeler: neat as a pin except for her mess of a love life.” 

Nancy’s teeth glinted in the moonlight as she grinned fondly up at her. Robin couldn’t help but watch her press her lips together, tongue running along them so that they too glistened oh so invitingly. 

“You have no idea,” Nancy breathed. 

Something about the way Nancy’s gaze seemed to rove across Robin’s face made her stay stock still. It was surely a trick of the dark, exhaustion creeping up on them after a long day. Nancy was not, certainly not, looking at her mouth…

“Robin?”

Blue eyes drew her back in again, soft and steady. 

“Hmm?” Robin managed to squeak. 

“You said you were trying to date Vickie. So, why aren’t you?” Nancy inquired, each word uttered tentatively like she had just spoken them for the first time. Robin didn’t know what to do with a shy Nancy, unsure where to go if Nancy didn't lead. 

“I-I can’t really just…I mean we’ve hung out a few times, and I think she likes me, but I’m still not sure if it’s, you know, like that,” Robin tried, stumbling through as usual. 

Nancy shook her head and said, “So, you haven’t tried to kiss her or anything yet?” 

Robin almost choked on her laugh. 

“Nancy,” Robin stated firmly. “I haven’t tried to kiss any girl yet.” 

Bewilderment scrunched up Nancy’s face as she recoiled in shock. 

“What? Never?” she exclaimed, and Robin pressed her lips into a thin line as she shook her head to confirm. Nancy’s eyes darted around as she worked out something in her head, eventually inquiring, “Then how do you know you even want to date girls? Or if you actually like girls…like that? Or whatever.” 

Robin quite enjoyed this, Nancy the one flustered and fumbling over words while Robin had the answer for once. She wasn’t cruel, however, and wouldn’t let her flounder like this for too long. 

“It doesn’t matter if I’ve kissed a girl or not. I think I’ve always known I liked girls,” Robin explained, with an assured shrug. Nancy nodded at that, but the arch of her brow said otherwise. 

“I suppose when you finally do kiss a girl, you’ll know for sure, right?” Nancy posited. But with a shaky timbre in her voice and an eagerness in her eye, a twinkle of something that startled Robin. Was she proposing that Robin find out right then and there? That Robin should kiss her? Nancy Wheeler? No way, not possible. She was having some sort of sleep deprived hallucination, or perhaps this entire conversation was a dream and she’d wake up in a pool of drool any second now. 

She could though, if that was what Nancy was offering. They were closer than before now, and one crane of her neck and she’d reach Nancy’s lips with ease, where they hung open slightly. 

“Yeah, I guess so,” Robin muttered, just above a whisper. The corner of Nancy’s mouth quirked, and she shifted a little further towards Robin, honest to god. Even closer now, freckle counting close, much too close, and Robin’s cowardice betrayed her as she added, “When I kiss Vickie, I’ll let you know.” 

Nancy’s shoulders went slack, and it was as if her whole body deflated a bit into the mattress. 

“When you kiss Vickie, of course,” she echoed Robin, shutting her eyes for a moment and shaking her head until a smile reappeared on her lips. Tight and polite. Robin hated it, and she wracked her brain for something to fix it. They could not just go to sleep like this. 

“I’ll report back to you and you can run the story in the next paper,” she yammered on. Putting on her best impression of an old-timey newspaper man, she recited, “Local Lesbian Confirms Gayness After First Kiss With A Girl.” 

She could have sworn Nancy blushed, were it not for the grey sheen over her skin as the moon rose higher. She shoved Robin playfully and the jostle scared off the jitters remaining from whatever maybe, not really, but almost happened between them. That’ll do for now. 

Goodnights were mumbled and they wriggled back under the covers, each of them facing outwards now. Robin’s drooping eyes traced the outline of a rather juvenile flower picture hung on the wall, a holdover from Karen’s days of decorating most likely. Daisies or roses or something or other. Whatever it was hardly mattered because Robin was subsumed by what she could only call temporary insanity as she replayed the last five minutes over in her head on loop. Wherein Hawkins' own Nancy Wheeler tried to talk her way into kissing her. 

Yeah, messy didn’t even begin to cover it. 

–

It wasn’t exactly mandatory that Robin attended movie nights at the Wheeler’s, but she and Steve were the only ones with access to Family Video now. The owners had fled as soon as the quarantine warning was issued, and in their hurry, hadn’t bothered to collect the spare keys. Steve had long ago agreed on being the keyholder given Robin’s penchant for misplacing important things like her own keys from time to time. The drive to Family Video took Steve past Robin’s house, which had him honking in her driveway to join him because he got bored doing things alone. So whenever the kids requested cinematic entertainment, Robin wound up in Wheeler’s basement. 

She hardly minded, as there was little else to do with only a High School diploma and a barbed wire barricade around the perimeter of town. What’s more, it gave her absolute power over what movies they watched. Power she definitely abused. Plus, Nancy joined them most of the time. Which was nice, but it definitely had nothing to do with Robin’s attendance. 

That night’s selection was Good Morning, Vietnam, which Mike reached for with glee when she pulled it out from under her arm. 

“What!? How did you get that? It just came out in theaters a few months ago,” he exclaimed, turning the VHS case over in his hands to admire the cover. 

“Murray got it for me, who knows how,” Robin replied, prying the plastic open in Mike’s hands to procure the tape. “I need to do research on how to spice up the broadcast, and who better to learn from than another Robin with a high stakes radio show!” 

“Oh please. You’re an intern at a local radio station, Robin. Not war torn Vietnam,” Dustin informed her, snidely. 

“Military everywhere, giant craters in the ground. Not that far off,” Steve considered with a shrug. 

The VCR swallowed the tape eagerly and Robin pressed play before returning to her perch on the end of the couch. The very couch where Nancy happened to be curled up right in the center.

“I’m not an intern anymore! Jimmy Lee flew the coop so I took it upon myself to fill the empty chair,” Robin told Dustin matter-of-factly, giving the brim of his hat a smack as she passed him on her way towards her seat. Plopping down on the sunken cushions, Robin held her thumb to her chest and announced, “You’re looking at Rockin’ Robin, Hawkins’ new radio host.” 

“Rockin’ Robin?” Nancy enunciated pointedly. She sported a smirk when Robin swung her head around to glare at her. Feigning innocence, Nancy merely shrugged and settled back against the scratchy tweed but Robin knew she held a laugh behind those pinched lips. 

Somewhere in the middle of the movie, Mike looked up at her from the foot of the couch and asked if she gets any intel about what the military is up to downtown, now that she has to read off their bullshit rules every day. 

“Nah, it’s the same rules every day, so far,” Robin lamented. She reached down to pluck the VHS box from Mike’s hands and shook it in the air as she sang, “But I know someone who does…” 

Nancy’s whole body swiveled to face her excitedly. 

“Wait, you mean Murray?” she asked. 

Nodding with a proud smile, Robin added, “He doesn’t just deliver contraband to us. He has an actual, legal job, delivering supplies to the military to keep the town running. He’s always downtown by the base. I bet he overhears shit all the time.” 

At that, Nancy clutched Robin’s face with splayed palms and all she saw was Nancy’s face fast approaching hers in a flurry of curls before she felt it. A kiss, lips pressed hard against her cheek, and wild, blue eyes beholding her. 

“Robin, you’re a godsend!” Nancy exclaimed, before launching herself from the couch and snapping at the boys to grab paper and maps and the like. Robin couldn’t make out much more than that through the ringing in her ears and the heat burning up her cheeks. It was Steve’s pillow chucked at her head that snapped her out of it, slowly looking over where he lounged on the far side of the couch. The two of them the only remaining people in front of the TV where Robin Williams prattled on to no one.  

“Look at you all red. Jonathan better watch out. He’s got some competition!” Steve teased her, chuckling at his own joke. Harmless joke, just a stupid little joke. 

Robin joined in reflexively, her own laughter coming out as a nervous titter. He clapped his hand on her knee affectionately as he heaved himself up from the couch and joined the others. 

Surely not. Surely. Robin roughly dragged her palms against her cheeks, giving them a light smack before she did the same. 

–

“Okay, corner of Randolph Way and Prospect Avenue,” Robin dictated from her crosslegged perch on Nancy’s bed. 

“Got it,” Nancy confirmed from the floor, tip of her finger pressed squarely at that intersection on the fold out map spread out before her. 

Sliding the plastic ruler over her map, crinkling against the down bedspread, Robin called out, “From there to Bolter Avenue, that’s a quarter inch.” 

Her fingertips held the thin strip of metal steady as she listened to the methodical plastic clicking of Nancy punching numbers into a calculator. 

“Okay, so thats… two thousand feet,” Nancy declared. “Go one eighth of an inch further, bump it up to about half a mile.” 

“Roger that.” 

“Where are we?” 

“Park Avenue.” 

“Stop there and let’s go half a mile south.” 

Robin deftly spun her ruler, following the straight, black line down. 

“That’s Whitford Street, right before the train tracks,” she read aloud. 

“Great, that can be another sector,” Nancy decreed, uncapping her highlighter and slowly dragging the yellow ink across her own map in slow, precise strokes. The squeak of the felt tip was the only sound in the room, save for the melodic din of the summer crickets spilling in through the flung open windows. They’d hoped to tempt an evening breeze, but the humid, swampy summer of the midwest was never so kind. Robin surveyed the block she’d just sectioned off and scrunched her nose up, straightening herself up from where she’d been hunched over the map. 

“I don’t know, Nance. That’s where a bunch of warehouses are. You think he can get in and out of all of that in thirty minutes?” she reckoned. 

Nancy didn’t pause her highlighting to respond, “I don’t know. I guess?” 

Grabbing her own calculator, Robin punched those numbers into it. 

“It’s like…nine million square feet,” she concluded, turning the device around to show Nancy the blocky numbers populating the top screen with zeroes. 

Finally, Nancy finished outlining and she slowly lifted her head to counter, “Ok but what is that in miles?” 

“It’s…,” Robin began, clicking and clacking away at the calculator for a beat before frowning at the answer. “Oh. Like, one third of a square mile. Yeah, that doesn’t sound so bad,”

But Nancy was tapping the butt of the highlighter against her chin, pensively. Another thought already taking root.

“You might be right, though, because we have to account for him reconnecting with the convoy on their way out, so he really only has about twenty? Twenty five minutes?” she worked out, eyes darting anxiously all around until she finally pinched the bridge of her nose and sighed. 

With a glance at the bedside clock, Robin tossed the calculator to the end of the bed and set her hands decidedly on her knees. 

“It’s getting late. We have to call it for the night, I think, or your brain is going to explode,” she reasoned. As Nancy’s hand moved from her nose to raking through her mop of matted curls, her shoulders sagged. 

“Yeah, I feel like my brain is overheating. Is that possible?” she said, throwing a grateful look up at Robin. 

Snorting, Robin offered, “There’s a first for everything. How about I clean up and you go get us some ice cream or something to cool down that brain of yours?” 

Nancy pointed her now capped highlighter at Robin affirmatively and groaned as she rose to her feet. 

“You’re sleeping over, right? You can grab anything you want to sleep in,” she confirmed, pausing at the door as Robin wrestled with the stupid map and its stupid nonsensical folds. 

“Sounds good!” Robin tossed out, deciding to force a new fold onto the map in lieu of her strong desire to rip it in two. It was just the measuring map anyway. 

Mindlessly, she began the now rote routine of collecting their supplies and packing them away for the night. At this point in the endless monotony of quarantine, she’d spent more nights in Nancy’s or Steve’s houses than her own. So much so that without thinking, she tugged open the correct desk drawer to deposit the pens in and plucked the exact shoebox in the closet to stow the maps away where Karen won’t find them. She even had a favorite pair of shorts now, which she dug around in Nancy’s drawer in search of; a black and red plaid pair that were largely unworn. From a Christmas set gifted by a grandparent Nancy hardly knew, that she was supposed to grow into but clearly never did. Robin had just pulled them on when Nancy’s footsteps began to thump up the stairs. 

“No ice cream, but I did find this,” Nancy announced, kicking the door shut behind her with her bare foot. In her hand, she triumphantly shook a wine bottle, and Robin’s brow shot up to her hairline. “What? We need to have a little fun, for one night at least. This one was already open anyway, and my mom won’t miss it. She drinks like three bottles a week at this point.” 

“Nancy Wheeler, I’ve never seen you so wild and crazy before,” Robin taunted her, with mock horror on her face as Nancy yanked the cork from the top with a satisfying, hollow pop. She brought the opening to her lips and Robin watched the liquid slosh down the neck and trickle into her mouth for a long, gulping pull. Nancy watched her right back, releasing the bottle with a smack. Sporting a strange, smug curl of her lips, she stalked forward and pushed the bottle into Robin's chest as she shouldered past her. The contact of the cold glass was enough to jolt Robin back into her own body to get her fumbling hands around it before it slipped. 

“I can fire a shotgun but I can’t have a drink?” Nancy challenged her, sinking down to the floor and lounging back against her bedframe. 

“That’s America for ya,” Robin quipped, joining her on the floor against the dresser where she took a swig of her own. Swallowing the sour grapes, she cleared her throat before remarking, “Your Mom is super hot by the way.” 

The daggers shot from Nancy’s eyes could have cut her to ribbons, and Robin threw her head back against the wood to release a deep bellied laugh. Nancy smiled in spite of herself but snatched the bottle back. Legs stretched out, towards each other along the floor, Nancy’s socks came up to Robin’s thigh. She could touch them if she wanted to, which she definitely didn’t. 

“How is that girl by the way, the one you were trying to ask out? Vickie, right?” Nancy pivoted, hiding her frown in the mouth of the bottle with another gulp. But Robin caught it, narrowed her eyes and left it alone for now. Weird. 

“She’s, uh, she’s good,” Robin answered, picking at the hem of her shorts. 

“Good,” Nancy affirmed, with a nod. She held out the bottle and Robin took it gladly. 

Another swig, and Robin fired back with a tilt of her head, “How is Jonathan?” 

“He’s good,” Nancy chirped, eyes wide and blinking. “They’re back in California for a bit, packing up their stuff to bring back to Hawkins.” 

“That’ll be nice to have him officially back,” Robin supplied, and Nancy nodded emphatically. 

“Totally, really nice,” she agreed, still nodding, eyes drifting off to something on the floor that wasn’t there. Brow pinched in that way Robin had come to notice meant she was fighting with herself, or working something out at the very least. 

She snatched the bottle out of Robin’s yielding hands and took a large gulp before looking her squarely in the eye again. 

“It’s not nice, actually,” Nancy corrected herself, chuckling darkly. “He’s so serious all the time around me now. Always asking if I’m okay, treating me like…like I’m made of glass or something. Like I’ll break if he, I don’t know, hits the brakes too hard in the car. I hate it.” 

Robin grimaced and said, “That’s such a drag, Nance. I’m sorry.” 

“And it’s just that he is great, he is, really,” Nancy continued, the confession spilling out of her as the wine sloshed in her grip with every frantic gesture. “He’s understanding and kind and really patient, and that’s amazing. But I just…God, we don’t even….” 

“Fuck?” 

Nancy choked on a laugh, and sputtered, “We do! I mean, it’s just been hard with everything but…I mean we–” 

“Nancy, he sleeps in your basement half the time but nevertheless, I’m up here more than he is,” Robin stated, frankly. A long sigh collapsed Nancy’s chest. 

“Yeah, well, it’s not like we fight. We get along great. He’s just always telling me to take a moment to rest, but I can’t rest. I don’t want to rest. If anything I just want to blow off some steam, that’s what I want,” Nancy concluded. 

“Gun range not doing it for you these days, huh?” Robin joked, and Nancy cracked a smile at that. Robin bit down on her lip. 

Ignoring the question, Nancy picked at the paper label peeling of the bottle and asked, “You don’t feel that too? All the waiting around, trapped here? Like you just need to do something to get it all out.”

Robin cocked her head to the side and prodded, “It?” 

“Yeah, just this feeling of like…,” Nancy trailed off. 

Robin sat still for as long as she could, which was longer than she normally would have, for Nancy to come back. Although, as a gentle, barely noticeable breeze crept into the room and toyed with an errant curl atop Nancy’s head, Robin didn’t need her to finish to know what she meant. 

“I do,” she voiced aloud, and it was enough to bring Nancy’s blue eyes back around, finding Robin with a curious shine to them. 

“What’s it like with girls?” she inquired, suddenly. Were it not for the dresser, Robin would have fallen flat on her back. 

“Uh, I mean, I’ve only kissed… just the one girl,” Robin tried to buy herself some time, but Nancy rolled her eyes. 

“Fine, what’s it like with the one girl? Compared to boys,” Nancy clarified, head tilting down towards her expectantly.  

With a bashful laugh, Robin admitted, “Well I’ve never really done…anything with a boy so I can’t really tell you.” 

“Just try,” Nancy insisted, with a casual shrug. 

A simple question, logical to ask. It should be easy to answer or even make something up. Robin looked up at the ceiling, wracking her frazzled brain for something to say, something normal or at the very least something helpful. 

“I…it’s like…when you…or I guess not you, but you know, like…,” she stammered, before she drummed her hands on her thighs and gave up. “I just can’t, Nance, I don’t know.” 

Nancy chewed on her lip, and it did nothing to assuage Robin’s rising jitters, nor did the next few words out of that mouth. 

“Show me, then.” 

Something between a squeak and a cough tore from Robin’s throat, and she sat still as stone in the echo of it. Waiting for Nancy’s face to twist into a smile and reveal it was a joke, a weird joke but a drunken joke between friends. Nothing of the sort came as seconds ticked by. In fact, Nancy sat calmly, if not a bit antsy. 

“Show you…what?” Robin faltered. 

“Kiss me.” 

Robin balked at that, mouth gaping and a laugh tearing from her chest almost maniacally. But Nancy remained steadfast. She made her sincerity quite clear as she set the bottle to the side and climbed forward so she sat upright, on bent knees and beckoning for Robin to do the same. Robin was never one to disobey Nancy Wheeler, and she dare not start now.

Mirroring Nancy, Robin leaned forward before she lost her nerve entirely. Gentle, soft, and quick, with the faintest smack of lips as she pulled back. Nancy’s eyes dragged open, and the corner of her mouth quirked upwards. 

“What are we, twelve?” Nancy goaded her. “I said show me, Buckley.” 

Robin shook her head, rolling her eyes as she surged forward. One hand sliding across Nancy’s jaw to cradle her face and the other flat against the small of her back, Robin drew her in and kissed her, really kissed her. Mouth pressed against hers, opening again and again, as Nancy’s lips parted to gasp and promptly kissed her right back. Closing down on Nancy’s bottom lip, tasting the remnants of bitter wine and drinking in as much of Nancy as she could get. 

It was Robin that drew back first, eyes opening just quick enough to catch Nancy canting forward, chasing her mouth. Holy shit. 

She must have said that out loud because Nancy giggled, blushing and quite pleased with herself before she breathed, “C’mon.” 

Up on her feet before Robin could catch her breath, Nancy tugged her up onto the bed, sitting up as she leaned forward to meet Robin’s lips. Eagerly, she kissed her again and again, falling back onto the pillows and taking Robin by the collar with her. Robin tumbled to the side of her, both of them rolling onto their sides to not break contact. It was all Robin could do to keep up, every nerve ending alight with every new touch. The soft thicket of Nancy’s curly hair swallowing her fingers, the brush of Nancy’s bare thigh against her own. Nancy’s fingertips danced across her shoulders and down her side where they landed on her hip. She wanted… god, she just wanted to…

Without a thought, she rolled Nancy onto her back with Robin hovering above her, just above. Knees crooked on either side of her and only her free arm holding her up as Nancy’s eyes fluttered open, that blue just a touch darker in the dim lamplight. 

Her pulse thundered in her ears as she gulped down enough air to ask, “Is this okay?” 

Nancy’s cheeks broke into an impish grin and she nodded. 

“We’re just normal teenagers getting drunk and blowing off some steam for one night, right?” Nancy intoned. 

Robin exhaled her nerves on the back of a laugh and nodded, diving back in to kiss her. Slow and indulgent, Nancy’s plush lips sliding easily against her own. Inch by inch, Robin let her hand slide down the silky curve of her neck and along the angular peaks of her shoulders, down the slope of her ribs and gently, oh so gently taking a hold of her hip.

“Robin,” Nancy murmured against her lips. Robin hummed in response as she pulled away just enough, pausing every muscle. “I won’t break, you of all people know that.” 

Robin nodded, and opened her eyes once again to find nothing but blue. 

“Sorry, I just, um…I don’t exactly know what I’m doing,” Robin confessed. 

Nancy blinked and Robin felt her shoulders shrug against her arm as she too divulged, "It’s okay, neither do I.” 

Maybe Nancy meant something else, something more loaded as she admitted that. However, Robin was too drunk on Nancy’s skin and lips and the whine she let out when Robin dropped her hips down atop hers to look any deeper that night. Wriggling a bit to the left, she slotted a leg between Nancy’s and they both gasped at the friction, hips desperate for more. Her mouth and tongue lapping up the salty taste of Nancy’s skin, warm with summer heat and dried sweat and soft, so so soft. Slipping her tongue into Nancy’s mouth and palms beneath her shirt, she was certain she wasn’t as coordinated or smooth as she had dreamed she would be the first time. How could it matter, when it was Nancy, back arching into her hands and expelling pleas in the form of her name. She was doing something right. 

They were both breathless by the time Robin’s hand inched beneath the waistband of Nancy’s shorts. She wasn’t nervous at this point, as all those hesitations were somewhere on the floor with Nancy’s bra. Rather it was the darkened, wide eyes and lips shining with spit that Robin wanted to savor as she moved her hand oh so slowly further down, down, down. 

The throaty moan that poured from Nancy’s mouth when Robin slipped a finger inside of her caught both of them off guard. Robin leaned down to kiss her, swallow the sound lest it reach the far end of the hall where her parents slept. But perhaps more because that sound was hers, only hers. She had made Nancy feel like that and that made Robin feel electric. 

She was certain there wasn’t a day that Nancy Wheeler didn’t know exactly what she wanted, and Robin was more than happy to be the one to give it to her. Nevermind that the last Robin had checked, that wine bottle was still half full. 

– 

With fifteen minutes to spare, Robin burst through the doors of The Squawk the next morning and nearly knocked Steve over on her race to the chair. 

“Thank god!” he hollered, “I was worried I was going to have to read them off myself today and you know how I get mic-fright.” 

“Yeah, yeah, sorry I just lost track of time,” she claimed, hurriedly skimming the pages Steve printed out for her for anything new, anything that might trip her up. Same old propaganda as usual. 

“Where were you?” 

Robin blinked rapidly and a panicked frisson ran up her spine as she spun in her chair to face Steve. 

“Wh-what?” she blubbered. 

“This morning? You weren’t at home, and I think your Mom hates me, by the way,” Steve said, casually. Not accusatory, not even suspicious. Placid and genuinely curious as ever. If Robin could have smacked herself without him noticing, she would have. 

“Oh! Oh, right, yeah, I just got caught up at Nancy’s last night. Doing her–making her maps I mean, the sector maps,” Robin rambled, the papers rustling and crumpling as she waved her arms around far too much. 

Luckily, Steve was preoccupied with his sound effect tapes, and he merely rolled his eyes.
“Ah, yeah, she’s still working on those, huh?” he muttered, and Robin nodded, lest more incriminating words tumble out. 

She instead preoccupied herself with rifling through a crate of records for her first song of her show. Not that she had any ideas, as her mind was an endless filmreel on loop of Nancy’s skin and lips and thighs clamping around her hips…

She closed out her announcements, dryer than usual, with the sendoff, “Our first song is dedicated to this crazy dream I had last night. I could have sworn it was real but…there’s just no way. Here’s Close To Me by those lovely lads from across the pond, The Cure.” 

–

Every inch of Robin’s body was coated in a thin layer of sweat, but especially the palms of her hands that slipped around the rusted metal handle of the shovel. With the tip of it forced into the compact dirt deep enough, she lifted one foot onto the top edge and hoisted herself onto it with a grunt. The blade cut into the soles of her beat up high tops as she wriggled from side to side, trying to use the weight of her entire body to shove it deeper. Iron crunched against embedded pebbles and decades of compressed decayed leaves and she was soon out of breath. Time to lift. 

Up came the dirt to reveal only more dirt beneath. Robin surveyed their work, just a two foot wide shallow ditch after an hour. Pitiful, but also why her and Nancy had been assigned this task and not one of the countless, strapping young men was beyond her. 

Speaking of, Nancy, in her fitted tank top and little teal shorts, was relentless with her half of the task, chipping away at the ground in efficient chunks of earth that she flung to her right. Robin admired her determined, set jaw and grunt-less labor, stronger than she looks. Always underestimated. Robin was certain that she would not appreciate being categorized as weaker than the boys, so that one would stay an inside thought, she decided with a fond shake of her head.

She was grateful for the cover of thick, late-summer trees from the sun as they dug in the woods a stone’s throw from Hopper’s cabin. Head tilted back lazily, Robin gave her aching muscles a respite while she enjoyed the green canopy above, leaves that seemed to glow from within, saturated with sun. Not a cloud in the crystalline sky where the branches gapped, but the threat of rain hung around them in the air, thick and soupy. Why couldn’t they wait a few more weeks and just do this in the fall? 

 Finally, a noise from Nancy, a victorious one. 

“What?!” Robin exclaimed, frantically looking around the ground at Nancy’s feet as she came back to earth. 

With three more strikes of the shovel, the center of their ditch gave way and crumbled down into an opening. 

“Hah! There it is!” Nancy rejoiced, and Robin joined her to hurriedly jam the shovels into the surrounding soil to widen it. Cautiously, of course, but enough to peer down inside. 

Pulling a flashlight from her backpack, Robin held it above the hole and illuminated the cavernous space beneath it. 

“Looks like a tunnel to me,” she confirmed, looking up at Nancy who grinned ear to ear. She’d never seen a smile as infectious as that so naturally, Robin couldn’t help but return it warmly. 

They carried out the remainder of their assignment with a renewed vigor of success. The opening gaped to about three feet across, as directed by the others. Out came the tarp, unfurled in unison across the tunnel entrance and sprinkled with leaves and dirt in at least an attempt to blend it with the forest floor. The carpentry division of their little operation would be along tomorrow anyway to give it a real hatch and seal it up more convincingly. For now, they rested their elbows on upright shovels and caught their breath. 

“Hey, you know what’s a little ways over there?” Nancy piped up, jerking her head over to her left where the woods spilled down a gradual slope. Robin eyed her curiously, wiping her sweaty brow pointlessly with her sweaty arm before shaking her head. “Lake Tippecanoe. I bet it’ll feel awesome to jump in on a day like today.”

Robin snickered, but remarked, “I didn’t bring a swimsuit.” 

Nancy gave her a once over and Robin swore it got ten degrees hotter despite the sinking sun. She swallowed the spit that pooled in mouth. 

“Neither did I but we don’t need them,” Nancy assured her with a blasé shrug, chucking the shovel to the ground and beginning to stalk backwards. Eyes on Robin, head cocked like a challenge, like a dare. 

“Nancy, wait,” Robin called out, but she only giggled and turned around, picking up a light jog in the direction of the lake. The metal handle of her shovel clanged as it hit a large stone, joining the other on the ground, but she paid it no attention in her pursuit. Her calls dissolved into exasperated pleas, following Nancy where she darted through the trees and dried brush. The dense air whipped past her as she followed that twinkling, echoing laughter and streak of teal. Eventually, they both skidded to a halt. The edge of the lake carved out a clearing where a small outcrop of boulders stretched a few yards out into the sun and the water lapped at the muddy shore. “What are we–” 

Robin’s words died in her throat as she turned to discover Nancy pulling her tank top off, followed by her shoes and her shorts until she was in nothing but her underwear. Modest and with a demure, lacy trim, but underwear still and they were out in the open, for christ’s sake. 

“Nancy!” Robin hissed, making sure to look at her face and just her face. “What the hell are you doing? Someone could see us and I do not want to be some creepy old guy’s jerk off material!” 

A laugh burst out of Nancy at that, and Robin watched it jostle her chest and flex her abdomen, skin taut and looking just as soft as she remembered. She might have licked her lips before she could stop herself, shit. 

“Nobody comes out here,” Nancy asserted, drawing Robin’s attention back up to her smug grin. Caught, Robin snapped her mouth shut as Nancy instructed, “Now strip! It’s only fair.” 

Nancy spun on her heel and made for the shore, leaving no room for Robin to argue. Not that she even had one at the ready. Robin would probably just as blindly follow her orders if Nancy was wrapped in a puffer jacket, so a half-naked Nancy was impossible to resist. Shaking her head, Robin chuckled as she watched her clamber out onto the rocks, legs careful and hesitant as a foal. What the hell. Robin was glad to be rid of her sweat soaked clothes anyway. 

With one mischievous little glance back at Robin, Nancy plunged into the lake and Robin leapt in soon after her. Damnit, she had been right about how nice it was. The cool water was a soothing balm as it enveloped her aching muscles and buoyed her as she let her limbs limply float around her. She had no idea how long they spent swimming around, gliding along the still surface and squealing when their feet inevitably touched something slimy below. And when Robin spun around to find an empty lake, she felt her heart leap into her throat and only thought of the gate at the bottom of Lover’s Lake and was about to dive down herself when Nancy shot up with a splash right in front of her nose. She screamed in equal parts fury and relief and slapped her arm on the surface to send a tiny tidal wave towards Nancy. 

Arms sore, they bobbed in the water as their laughter simmered down, just an arms length apart. So close that Robin’s kicking feet grazed Nancy’s below the surface, and she could see the tiny droplets hanging off of her long, fluttering eyelashes. All it would take is drifting a little closer and she could press her wet lips against Nancy’s. It was, of course, Nancy who seized the moment, and Robin held her breath. 

The rippling water compressed between them, breaking against Robin’s neck as Nancy closed in on her, stopping just inches away before she said, “Race you to the shore.” 

There she was again, chasing after Nancy Wheeler. Back to shore and through the woods again. Up to the empty cabin where they made use of Hopper’s jerryrigged washing machine out back to quickly refresh their clothes and underwear back to a wearable condition. Taking turns in the shower, Nancy first at Robin’s insistence, and foraging for a late afternoon snack, steering clear of the Eggos of course. Until they found themselves sitting on the couch, passing a bag of chips between them in nothing but two towels. 

“It’s kind of cozy in here,” Robin said, gazing around the knicknacks populating the bookcase and the rack of mismatched mugs hanging in the kitchen. 

“It’s taken a beating but it’s still standing,” mused Nancy, eyes up towards the roof with its patchwork of old and new beams and planks of wood holding it together. 

Robin pulled a single chip out of the bag and cracked it into pieces on the roof of her mouth. Salt prickled across her tongue, sharp and starchy. With the errant coos of nesting birds and the white noise of swaying branches as the wind skimmed the tops of the trees, it was hard to imagine the tendrils of an eldritch demon reaching them out here. That beneath the idyllic glassy lake and the distant, rhythmic rattling of the dryer, tunnels had once gutted Hawkins from within and she hadn’t noticed. Nobody had, and they laid empty all this time, remnants of a silent invasion, a rot. 

“Robin?” 

Like a siren song, Nancy’s voice tugged her back into the cabin, onto the couch. She met Nancy’s puzzled gaze from across the cushions. 

“Sorry, just zoned out for a second,” she said, offering a small smile of reassurance. 

“It’s okay, he can’t get us out here, I don’t think,” Nancy comforted her anyway. She scooted down to Robin’s end, bumping her hip playfully with her own. Gingerly, she replaced the bag of chips in Robin’s hands with her own, still a little pruny from their swim as her fingertips grazed over Robin’s palm. “It’s just us out here. You and me.” 

Robin curled her fingers around Nancy’s hands, giving them a good natured shake as she maintained, “I’m okay, I swear.”  

Nancy nodded, her damp curls bouncing and her eyes alight. Like they were in the lake, like they were that night weeks ago, or was it months? Time collapsed in on itself these days, blurring and blending but Nancy was looking at her right now, hopeful and waiting. Surely not, that was one time. But it was Robin’s turn to move, and with half her street swallowed up by a crater to hell, what did she have to lose. 

She ducked her head down just a bit, canted forward inch by inch. Nancy barely moved but she didn’t pull back, all the encouragement Robin needed to push forward just enough to reach her mouth, parted and dusty pink and waiting. 

Just outside the cabin wall, a dull buzz signaled the end of the dryer cycle and Robin’s attention snapped to it. 

“Clothes are done,” she said dumbly, voice wobbling horrendously and she could feel Nancy’s eyes on her. “Ready to head home?” 

A soft knuckle and thumb firmly gripped her chin and turned her head back to their owner. They held her in place and Robin’s throat bobbed at the dewy sheen on Nancy’s skin and the darkened blues of her eyes tracing her face all the way down until they landed on her lips. Every nerve ending in her body stood at attention, and there would be nowhere on her body that Nancy could touch next that wouldn’t positively erupt. 

“No,” Nancy uttered, her warm breath hitting Robin’s lips before her own crashed into them. God, she kissed her hot and wild, mouth open and Nancy’s sigh filling her throat. Robin’s hands dove into the tangles of her hair, thumb grazing her cheek and she felt the towel loosen around her chest as Nancy twisted it in her grip. 

“Nance,” Robin mouthed against her, pushing her forehead against Nancy’s to break them apart and barely catching her terrycloth cover before it fell open entirely. “Should we be…I mean you’re still…and I’m, I mean…” 

“Relax! It doesn’t really count because it’s just, I don’t know, a little fun right? And we deserve that, whenever we can get it these days,” Nancy cajoled her, head cocked coquettishly in a way that made Robin blush. God, she was good. 

“If that’s what you want to call it,” Robin agreed, less than convinced and with a wry smile to show it. This was a dangerous game they were playing. In dangerous times, no less. 

Nancy pursed her lips to keep her own smile at bay, and fired back, “Yeah, well you could also use the practice.” 

“Is that so? You seemed to enjoy yourself quite a bit last time,” Robin recounted, hand snaking back up her neck as she ducked back down. 

“Yeah?”

Nancy hooked her finger in Robin’s towel and tugged as she pressed another kiss up onto her lips. 

“Yeah.” 

Robin climbed onto the couch, knees slipping a bit in the gap between the cushions, the wellworn fabric scratchy against her skin while she kissed Nancy onto her back. As Nancy’s towel fell open, Robin lowered herself down and the press of Nancy’s sun soaked skin to her own was heavenly. She felt her body hum from her chest down to the tips of her toes, and she slipped her tongue into Nancy’s mouth as she moaned. Up bucked Nancy’s hips and Robin felt her body arch into her like a tightened bow. 

Face buried in the salty crook of Nancy’s neck, she rode Nancy’s thigh until she gasped her name and saw stars behind her eyelids and they both collapsed in a sweaty heap. The mark Robin left there was definitely in the shape of her mouth, and Nancy smacked her arm three times for good measure as they got dressed. She would have to wear her voluminous perm down for at least a few days now in the brutal heat, and she swore would find a way to make Robin pay for that. 

“Promise?” Robin taunted her as they locked the door in the dying daylight, eyes fluttering innocently. Nancy all but shoved her down the steps.

–

What little muscle Robin had amassed in her eighteen years of life continued to ache well into the next morning and Steve rather uselessly advised her to ice next time. There wouldn’t be a next time, as digging one hole was enough to have her swear off physical activity for the rest of her life. Of course, she failed to mention the other physical activity that probably contributed to the muscle aches, but that wasn’t relevant.

She could barely raise her arm to move the needle onto the record as she finished up her cheery morning announcements. 

“Don’t forget that sunscreen today! It’s going to be another beautiful Hawkins scorcher and if you’re anything like your’s truly, summertime means getting into all kinds of trouble. The Shondells knew all about that, but here’s a shiny new update to their classic song; I Think We’re Alone Now by Tiffany.” 

–

“What about that one?” Nancy prompted, finger pointed up into the velvety sky. 

“Which one?” Robin clarified, feet swinging as they dangled from the edge of the Squawk van where they both sat, rear doors flung wide open with the grassy hill tumbling down before them. 

She watched Nancy’s finger intently as it traced a loop through the sprinkling of stars above the treeline, adding, “It’s like a sideways C, you see that? Is that a constellation?” 

“Oh! Yes, that one is Corona Borealis,” Robin relayed to her, leaning back on her hands. They sank into the freshly laid carpet that covered the floor of the van, and the walls, and also the roof. Dustin was nearly done outfitting the vehicle for his tracker thingymajig, and apparently he needed sound dampening to hear the radio waves or whatever. It had taken them all day to figure out how to get it to stick, nevermind the hole they had to drill through the top. Robin just hoped that Jimmy didn’t try and send someone to fill in for him at the station, someone officially appointed who wouldn’t take kindly to how they’d vandalized radio property. 

Nancy looked back at her lounging from where she perched on the edge and waved her hand impatiently as she demanded, “Well, what’s that one about?” 

Robin chuckled and cleared her throat before beginning, “It’s a crown that belonged to a princess. Her first marriage was to this guy who got stuck in a labyrinth where a monster lived, the Minotaur. Who was also her brother, because her mom slept with a bull, like an actual animal bull, but that’s not really the point of this story.” 

Nancy rolled her eyes at Robin’s tangent but otherwise remained at attention. 

“Anyway,” Robin carried on, “she figured out that if he took a ball of string into the maze with him and unraveled it as he went, that he could follow it out once he beat the monster. Of course it worked, because the princess was a genius, and he married her. Only for a while, until he abandoned her on an island. The Greek God Diyonesus heard her crying and found her on the island and then he married her. Much better guy, loved to party, and his brother made her a crown for their wedding day. When the ceremony ended, she was so excited she threw it up into the sky, and there it lives to this day.” 

Nancy’s face twisted into a grimace. 

“She saved his life and he just dumped her the first chance he got?” she guffawed. 

Shrugging, Robin said, “Yeah, took her a few tries, but she got a happy ending eventually.” 

Nancy hummed, not quite as satisfied with such a tale, and turned back to the mouth of the van yawning at the cloudless sky. 

“Okay, that one, then,” she said, finger outstretched again. “I think I see a triangle on top of a rectangle. Is that something?”

Robin hoisted herself back upright and squinted at the general area Nancy was gesturing to. 

“That? The dipper?” 

“No, I know that one,” Nancy huffed. “C’mere.” 

She felt Nancy’s downy curls against the side of her face followed by the press of her bony shoulder against Robin’s arm. Her breath caught as Nancy’s temple rested against her own, clammy with sweat. They were nearly cheek to cheek, Nancy’s arm held out and Robin was definitely supposed to follow her finger but she peered down out of the corner of her eye instead. 

Nancy caught her and nodded forward impatiently. Right, right. 

“See that? It’s like a circus tent,” she described, and Robin spotted it alright. Her affirmative nod became a nuzzle against Nancy’s skin and it sent goosebumps down her neck at how familiar it all felt. Like it was the most natural thing in the world to feel the weight of Nancy lean against her, stargazing alone on the top of a hill. Almost like a date, if the boys and Steve hadn’t just sped off a mere twenty minutes ago. Robin gulped before she spoke. 

“Yep, yeah, um, that’s Sagittarius,” Robin managed to get out, and felt bolder than she ever had in her entire life when she reached her own hand up to grasp Nancy’s. Her hand guided Nancy’s finger around the rest of the constellation as she explained, “See that handle part, and this spout part? It looks like a teapot.” 

“Oh yeah, I see it,” Nancy muttered, and the apple of Robin’s cheek tingled as she felt Nancy’s jaw bone shift with every word. Felt the hum along her skin trickle down into her hand, resting on the sliver of carpet between them, Nancy’s loose fist still cradled in her grasp. She made no motion to extract it, but she did shift away from Robin’s shoulder, squinting up at her as she questioned, “Wait, Sagittarius is a teapot?” 

Snorting, Robin shook her head and clarified, “No, sorry. It just looks like one. It’s a hunter with a bow and arrow. And his bow is always drawn. You remember Scorpius and Orion, right over there?” 

This time, Robin held up their clasped hands, vaguely circling the spots in the sky where a trio of bright, white stars marched in a row. She ducked her head back down to Nancy’s height this time, close enough to share the view. 

“Sagittarius is a protector, always ready to fire his arrow at Scorpius if he attacks Orion. And he’s one hell of a shot,” Robin proclaimed. “Sounds like somebody I know.”

A glance down at Nancy, pointed and brow raised. When Nancy lifted her head, she snickered but eyed Robin warmly, if she wasn’t mistaken. Fondly, even. She certainly found Robin’s knowing smile quite interesting, and they were close enough, a nose brush away. Robin could just…

“You haven’t told anyone, have you?” Nancy ventured to ask, “about us, I mean.” 

At that Robin reeled back slightly as she teased with a shit eating grin, “Us? What about us, exactly, Nance?” 

With a shove, Nancy scoffed, looking back up at the stars to avoid Robin catching the pink in her cheeks. But she did, the honeyed light from the van just enough to catch it, and the way she caught her bottom lip with her teeth.  

“You know what I mean,” Nancy grumbled. “You haven’t told Steve maybe?” 

Shaking her head, Robin voiced her response, “No, never. I wouldn’t.” 

“Right, of course,” Nancy hurried to concur, hand held out apologetically. And yet, something twisted across her mouth, and she added, “But…” 

Robin ducked her head to edge into Nancy’s line of sight, getting a skittish flicker of blue in return. 

“But…what?” Robin egged her on. 

“Well, the first song you always play, you’re always saying you relate to them or something,” Nancy slowly laid out, one hand now balled in a determined fist. With a sharp inhale, she finished, “They’re not supposed to be about me, are they?” 

It wasn’t that it wasn't a fair question, but rather that Robin realized how little she’d thought all this through. 

Still, all Robin could think to say was, “I didn’t know you were such an avid listener.”

Another shove as Robin simmered with laughter and Nancy snapped, “We all listen every day, for the code.” 

“Sorry, yeah I know,” Robin chuckled beneath Nancy’s withering stare. 

“Well? Are they?” Nancy pressed. 

Robin turned to her and considered the truth, honestly she did. Especially with the way Nancy fidgeted with her thumbnail and had already put her dignity on the line by asking in the first place. 

But Robin wasn’t quite that brave and it got stuck somewhere in her chest, so she answered instead, “No. They’re just songs. They’ve got nothing to do with you.” 

Nancy narrowed her eyes suspiciously, and Robin clenched her jaw but held her ground. She wished her feet touched the gravel so she could dig her heels in just in case. 

“Really?” she needled, head cocked with doubt. 

“Really!” Robin chirped, without the foggiest idea why she insisted on lying. Nancy could read anyone like a book and she was hardly a challenging read. 

“Even Tenderness? The one you played the other day?” Nancy kept at it, arms crossed now. 

Eying her cooly down the bridge of her nose, Robin replied with a shrug, “It’s a great song.” 

“I know it’s a great song!” Nancy rounded on her, and Robin barely flinched. Smiling politely and quite enjoying Nancy all riled up like this. With a huff, Nancy determined, “You’re impossible.” 

“So I’ve been told,” she said proudly, as if it were a brag. That garnered a chortle from Nancy and there went Robin’s heart again, swelling just a little bit more. She was looking down at her swinging feet in the long silence when Nancy finally broke it. 

“And when you dedicate them to someone?” 

Robin snapped her attention back up to Nancy, as if that wasn’t enough of a tell. Those stupidly blue eyes seemed to think so, anyway. The way they scanned her beneath her matted bangs, seeking and already sure of the answer. 

“They’re for Vickie,” Robin blurted out before she could stop herself.

Leaning forward, Nancy smiled like a cat who caught the canary and uttered, “Is that right?” 

The low timbre of her voice flipped Robin’s stomach, but she wouldn’t back down now. She couldn’t. 

“That’s right,” Robin articulated, popping her last T to snotty effect. Nancy just nodded slowly, tongue in her cheek and that little smile still curling the corners of her mouth. It was faint, but Robin could just feel the gentle tug of Nancy’s hand playing with the hem of Robin’s t-shirt. 

She hardly had time to look down as Nancy began again just above a whisper, “You know, my sister really liked that song you played the day after the lake, what was it? I Think We’re Alone Now?” 

Every breath of hot air from Nancy’s mouth hit Robin’s lips and all she could do was nod. 

“She told me to ask you to play it again. It’s her new favorite song, now,” Nancy told her, and Robin couldn’t take it anymore. 

“Did you make up some bullshit excuse to drive me home tonight so you could tell me about your kid sister?” she quipped, leaving Nancy speechless for once with her mouth hanging open. 

“No,” she choked. 

“So…?” Robin volleyed, and Nancy licked her lips. Actually, hungrily, licked her lips. 

“Screw you, Buckley,” she uttered, tugging hard on Robin’s shirt and crashing into her mouth. Robin kissed her gladly, mouth enveloping her lips triumphantly until she pulled back with a wet smack. 

“Be my guest,” Robin couldn’t help but taunt her, and was promptly pinned back onto the carpeted floor of the van. 

–

There was a cocky spring in her step as Robin leapt up from her chair after starting off the broadcast with Our Lips Are Sealed. It didn’t go unnoticed by Steve as he rifled through a stack of tapes. 

“Well, well, well, what have you been up to?” he asked in a sing-song voice. 

“Wouldn’t you like to know!” she sang back at him as she busied herself with the switchboard. 

“I would, actually!” he exclaimed, resting his hip on the board and bearing a gleeful, toothy grin. “So, you and Vickie, huh?”

She gave a non-answer hum in return, fiddling with a knob that didn’t actually do anything and feeling the heat creep up her neck. 

“You’ve been awfully cheerful lately so does that mean…,” he trailed off. Tapes still in his hands, he waved them in a vague, suggestive fashion. 

With a grimace she couldn’t hide, Robin played it off with, “God, gross, Steve.” 

“It’s not gross! That’s awesome, dude!” he exulted, trailing after her as she turned abruptly and strolled aimlessly through the station. She prayed something would break right there, explode preferably, so she could throw herself into that and stop talking for once. 

“If something happens, I’ll let you know, don’t worry,” Robin assured him with a placating open palm. 

Nodding in a way that sent his floppy hair flopping even more, Steve ensured, “Good! Because you can tell me, you know. You deserve to have some fun, too.” 

That was the thing, of course. Robin really could tell him. He might not be thrilled but he would be happy for her in his own jolly way. She just didn’t have the heart to see his face fall like she knew it would in those first few seconds, his last shred of hope dashed like she knew it would be. 

Also, it wasn’t her secret alone to tell. God, this was a mess. 

Thankfully, she didn’t have time to dwell on that as her otherwise empty evening was hijacked by another planning meeting and the station basement flooded with the kids and parents alike. She’d been sent to get the maps from the storage room when she heard footsteps coming around the shelves. 

Nancy, in a sky blue blouse that really made her eyes gleam as she came to a halt in front of Robin. 

“Nothing to do with me, huh?” she baited her, blithely. 

A pile of papers collected beneath her arm, Robin turned to face her squarely and confirmed, “Yep. Nothing to do with you.” 

A sly grin spread across Nancy’s cheeks and before she could say another word, Robin brushed past her. 

“Grab the rest, will ya?” she called back to her, doing her best to suppress her own smirk before rounding the corner and rejoining the group. 

–

Finally, the totalometry tracker was up and running. Telephonrery? Whatever. The big satellite thing on top of the van successfully connected to the blinky thing strapped to Hopper. Their breakthrough in planning coincided with a much embraced break in the heatwave as autumn breezed through Hawkins. 

It also quickly became Steve and Dustin’s new toy, which soon developed into a sprawling game of hide and seek with Mike and Will and Caleb and anyone else who would be willing to bike around town. Robin and Nancy were not quite as enthused, and yet Steve insisted they go on at least one joyride. They shared a look of bemusement between them and agreed if only to shut him up. 

Lucas was their target, who’d grown into quite a little athlete over the years since Robin had first met him as a gangly little nerd. Perhaps he knew he was supposed to put on a show, because he pedaled that bike up through the woods at a startling pace. Steve hardly let up, taking screeching, hairpin turns and careening down winding roads, glancing proudly over to Nancy in the passenger seat who clutched the dashboard for dear life. All while Dustin shouted the glowing red numbers growing and dropping on the screen, with Robin jostling around in the back of the van alongside him. 

“Signal’s dropping, Steve!” Dustin shouted, as a four way intersection fast approached through the windshield. 

“Alright, alright!” he hollered back, making a split decision to turn left. The entire van and its passengers within swung to the right. Nancy yelled expletives at Steve and Dustin clutched the equipment and Robin slid up the wall until her head hit the roof. Thankfully, that too was carpeted. 

As Steve hit the gas on the straightaway, Dustin cheered, “Numbers climbing again! We got that son of a bitch.” 

Robin pushed her ruffled bangs from her face and watched Steve drum excitedly against the steering wheel, beaming at Nancy. 

“How about that, huh?” he whooped, jubilant at his correct choice. “Instinct, you know? It’s all about instinct.” 

Her best friend sure was such a little showoff whenever he could be. A holdover from his Prom King days, definitely, but he managed to make it endearing. Thankfully, he couldn’t see her eyeroll with how locked onto Nancy he was. She guessed, however, that Nancy would give him an eyeroll herself.  

Unable to see Nancy from her slumped position against the door, she heard her breathlessly chuckle, “Sure, Steve. If you say so.” 

–

Steve found it funny when Robin kicked off the next day’s broadcast with My Best Friend’s Girl, tossing a balled up piece of notebook paper at her head. A harmless, meaningless joke, of course, and she mimicked his bravado from the day before until they were both in stitches. 

Nancy, however, didn’t find her song choice all that amusing. 

Storming into the station as they were shutting everything down for the night, she let Steve know that Robin and her were having a girls night, rather forcefully. She must have forgotten to mention it. He gave her the salute as he headed out to his car, happy to get as far away from a peeved Nancy Wheeler as possible. He did mouth good luck at Robin from behind Nancy’s back, however, before shutting the heavy metal door behind him. 

“So, what are we doing for girls' night? Braiding each other’s hair?” Robin attempted, as they climbed down the clanging metal stairs to the station basement. 

“Why did you play that song?” Nancy interrogated her without any pleasantries. Robin spun jovially on her heel to face her, where she stood with arms crossed and a scowl. 

Feigning innocence, Robin tapped a finger to her chin and wondered, “What song?” 

Nancy took several strides forward and stood face to face with her, a piercing gaze despite how she looked up at Robin from her height disadvantage. 

“I’m not Steve’s girl,” she hissed, voice dropping to a venomous whisper. Despite the genuine fear Nancy inspired in her, Robin kept her face neutral somehow. 

“Right,” she confirmed, “you’re Jonathan’s girl.” 

Growling, genuinely growling, Nancy stalked off to pace the concrete floor in her baby blue Keds. Fear and affection swirled in Robin’s gut and she bit the inside of her cheek to keep from smiling. 

“I mean yes, but you know we’re on sort of a break type thing,” huffed Nancy, hand flailing as she snarled.

“A break…up?” Robin chanced, and Nancy stopped in her tracks to glare at Robin furiously. 

“Not exactly. Well, I don’t know,” she snapped, pinching the bridge of her nose with one hand and notching the other on her hip. It gave Robin a moment to indulge in a gratuitous stare, eyes raking down her pinched waist where shirt was tucked into a pleated peach skirt that stopped at her knees. Always the pastels with Nancy, but she made them look good somehow. Maybe she didn’t, and Robin was just a sucker for a pretty girl in a skirt. After a few deep breaths, Nancy let her hands flop to her side as she affirmed, “But that doesn’t mean I’m Steve’s girl.” 

“Got it,” Robin said, with a curt nod. 

Taking a step forward with a pointed finger, she added, “I’m not anyone’s girl.” 

“Noted.” 

Another step and Nancy was back in her immediate orbit.

“I can do whatever I want.” 

“Great.” 

“Great.” 

“So what do you want to do, then? For girls’ night?” Robin prompted, as nonchalantly as she could with Nancy so close to her and the brainwave interference that always caused. Nancy cocked an eyebrow and leaned forward, hand on Robin’s jaw to draw her in as she kissed her. Robin’s brain became pure static. 

Pulling back but with noses brushing, she barely registered Nancy murmuring, “I want you to sit on that couch.” 

A splayed palm pushed into the center of Robin’s chest gently, but firmly enough to guide her back step by step until the back of her knees hit the give of the cushions. Obediently, Robin let her legs give way and she leaned back against the pillows, eyes trained on Nancy’s as she stood over her. Not for long, though, as Nancy climbed astride her, knees sinking with the added weight and thighs, bare thighs, brushing the skin right above Robin’s knees. Shorts had been a great idea that day, thank god. 

Hands bracing Robin’s shoulders, Nancy ducked down to kiss her deeply, open mouthed, before commanding, “I want you to put your hands up my skirt.” 

Jesus, did the air become thick with Nancy’s darkened eyes fixed on her like that. Curious at the effect of her own words, along with an anxious twitch of her throat as if they both teetered on a knife’s edge of some kind. If she hadn’t just dipped her tongue in Robin’s mouth, it would have gone completely dry. 

As instructed, Robin’s hands slid up the front of Nancy’s thighs, feeling the skin prickle in their wake and watching every muscle on Nancy’s face. At the apex, her thumbs brushed the skin where it dipped down, feeling Nancy’s hip press forward and watching her mouth fall open. Fueled by the fire in her stomach that licked at the bottom of her lungs, Robin let her hands push further back and around her rear, gripping what she found and pulling a delicious gasp from Nancy’s throat. She was rewarded with a kiss, hands wrapping around her shoulders as Nancy fell into her, moaning into her mouth. Nevermind how Nancy didn’t resist as Robin drew her closer until she rested atop her thighs, her skirt ballooning around her like a cloud of cotton candy. 

Oh, god, she could feel her…how much she…

“I want you to touch me,” Nancy whispered, lips catching on Robin’s as she spoke barely a hair’s breadth away. Robin nodded fervently and wasted no time. 

They way Nancy’s hips chased her hand as she traced her, pulled her underwear to the side, and dipped inside of her. Faster, deeper, with some semblance of pace and rhythm sure, probably. Until–

“I want another one,” Nancy demanded, fingers gripping Robin’s shoulders as she moved in time with Robin’s hand. Eyes flying open, Robin was met with the most incredible vision; tousled curls falling around hooded, dark blue eyes and flushed cheeks. Nancy nodded a confirmation, a gasp coming out in lieu of words. Robin nodded right back and fumbled her way through Nancy’s sloppy kiss, shifting her hand as she drew it back and abided Nancy’s wishes. 

Two fingers, two, with Nancy stretching around her and whining beautifully at the addition. Hips bearing down on her hand and pressing it into her thigh, Nancy picking up the pace. Draped over her, sighing against her mouth, fisting the collar of her shirt, filling her lungs with the punchy, sweet chemical fruit of her shampoo. Nancy enveloped her completely. Every nerve and sound and sight, Robin could hardly believe she managed to have her like this. Falling apart in the very palm of her hand. 

–

To say they had their good days and bad days would be a bit of an oversell. Progress was slow going on every front. The trickle of supplies that Murray could smuggle at a time. The obscurity of the military operation, even from the vantage point of the steeple. El burning the candle at both ends, running herself ragged on training courses and searching the ether for Max. 

Somedays, all of that came to a head all at once, like today. 

Three weeks now, Murray had shown up without some sort of part for some sort of gadget the boys desperately needed. Today was no different. Erica returned from the steeple saying the base was building new barracks or buildings or something or other, creating more cover for their activities and making it more difficult to observe. And El had a full on meltdown. 

She was just a kid, as were all of them. In a blind rage, she smashed the makeshift lid of her deprivation chamber open and ripped off her googles, throwing them through a window that was thankfully open. The front door flung open without touching it, as she stormed out into the woods. Woodchips flying from nearby trees that bore the brunt of her wrath, and the crash of a smaller tree she managed to fell with one burst of energy at its base. 

Hopper carried her back into the cabin a little while later, her anguished sobs muffled by his suede coat. That’s what Robin heard at least, later that afternoon in the basement of the station as Will and Joyce debriefed the rest of them on the incident. Joyce was particularly broken up about it, giving a watery lament of how El is such a brave girl before ducking outside for a minute of fresh air. With nothing more to do for the day, everyone dispersed to their respective homes and prior engagements, ready to start again tomorrow. 

Well, everyone except Nancy, as it turned out. 

Robin had been closing down the station, preparing to bike home after she sent Steve off early to ferry the kids home after their meeting. The ride would do her good, breeze through her hair and the sleepy quiet of Hawkins backroads in the evening. Shake off the day. From the basement, though, she heard something metal drop and clang, followed by an expletive. 

“Steve? I thought you left hours ago!” she called down the stairs as she took two at a time. 

In the worn desk chair was not Steve but rather Nancy. Head propped up against her hand, haggard and surrounded by maps and papers and a tin can of spilled pencils on the floor. Robin took the last few steps slowly, as lightfooted as possible. 

“Hey, sorry for yelling. Didn’t know you were down here, still,” Robin said, with a tentative laugh at the end. As she approached the desk, she bent down to clean up the spill, shaking the restored pencil can with a smile and announcing, “All fixed.” 

Nancy flashed a weak smile in return, forced and slumping back into a frown. Then she was back to the work at hand, eyes scanning the pages and shaking her head. The golden lamplight made her pale skin look sallow and the bags under her eyes appear even more pronounced than usual. Maybe they were. Her hair frizzed as if she’d run her hand through it a thousand times, and the pen rattled anxiously in her hand. 

“Heading out soon? I could use a ride, actually,” Robin began again. 

Nancy just shook her head and mumbled, “I need to keep at this until I find another way.” 

“Another way?” Robin asked, taking a small step closer to get a better look at the papers strewn about. 

“Another plan, another route, something,” Nancy said, every word clipped with frustration. “If this stops working, we need another option and we need to get it ready.” 

Robin could see the hard set of her jaw and the tension in her shoulders where they rose up to her ears. Her heart ached at the sight. 

“Nance,” she said softly, and when she got no response, she rested her hand atop Nancy’s drumming one. More sternly, she tried again, “Nancy?” 

Slowly, Nancy turned to look up at her and Robin had never seen her like this. Color drained and hard lines across her brow, gazing up at Robin as if she had the answer and god, she wished that she could pull it out of her back pocket. 

Instead, she asked, “Have you slept at all this week?” 

Mouth opening, her eyes darted to the left as she prepared a deflective lie. A glance back up at Robin and that effort quickly fizzled out. 

“Not very well, actually,” she confessed, meekly with a wince. 

“Okay, well you’re not going to find a solution while you’re half asleep,” Robin pointed out, and Nancy breathed a sigh that she took as an agreement. “C’mon, why don’t you take a break from this for a little. Let’s lay down.” 

Palm held up, Nancy took it gratefully and let Robin lead her over to that old couch in the center of the room. 

“Sorry about the pencils. I…got frustrated and knocked them over on purpose,” admitted Nancy, voice laced with shame. As if she was scolding herself, and Robin frowned at the absurdity. 

“You had a sucky day. You could have flipped the whole desk over and it would have been justified,” Robin argued with a good natured laugh. She heard Nancy chuckle as she trailed behind her and considered that progress. 

“No funny business, I swear,” Robin promised, as they settled in together along the faded plaid pattern. The damn thing was nearly long enough for comfort, but Nancy curled into her like a cat, head on her clavicle and Robin let her arm drape across her shoulders. Into her hair where it brushed her chin, Robin uttered, “If you fall asleep, that’s okay. I’ll wake you up.”  

Nancy nodded against her chest but didn’t say another word. The stillness got to Robin however and her hand found its way to Nancy’s temple where it began combing through her matted curls. Tenderly and just barely scraping her scalp, she hoped it was soothing. Nancy didn’t move an inch, so she assumed it was, and anyway, within fifteen minutes, Robin was certain she’d fallen asleep. Her chest expanded and shrank rhythmically against Robin’s side, legs tangled together at the foot of the couch. Robin had never felt so peaceful and so important, warmed by Nancy’s body heat as the concrete walls cushioned them from the world above. 

The sort of thing she could get used to, and the very thought made her blush even with no one around. Nancy in her arms, leading her to bed after a long day and being the one whose touch brings her comfort. The one she relaxes into, whose kiss calms her racing mind. She sure hoped Nancy was asleep by then as her own heartbeat thumped louder and louder at the possibility. She was no fool, of course, and wouldn’t get her hopes up that she and Nancy had any sort of real present or future like that. Her heart had ached for unattainable girls before and she knew how that ended. Although, if she closed her eyes, Robin could pretend at least. And so she did. 

It hadn’t been a lie, exactly. Robin had every intention of waking her up after a good and long nap that she clearly needed. She’d just underestimated how the soft weight of Nancy’s body soothed her in return. She would hear it from her mother in the morning for not calling, and Steve would find them in a position that might look a little compromising if he were the type to suspect that sort of thing. But for now, she let Nancy’s deep breaths lull her into a dreamless sleep as she inhaled nothing but that stupid, saccharine shampoo.

–

To his credit, Steve didn’t remark much on the snuggled position he found them in the following morning. He did, however, bark at them as he paced around the basement to catch his breath. 

“Robin wasn’t home, and then I got here and Nancy’s car was still out there and I thought you got kidnapped? Demo-napped? I don’t know, Jesus!” he exclaimed, throwing his hands in the air. 

Profuse apologies and Nancy’s stifled laughs assuaged most of the panic from poor Steve’s mind. 

With one final chastising finger point between the two of them, he said sternly, “Don’t do that again, okay? You all have me worried sick all the damn time, shit!” 

He stormed up the steps, insisting he had actual work to do while they all snoozed on the job. As aggravated as he was, Robin smiled at his retreat up the steps. It was nice to be cared for, message received. 

Nancy had gathered her things in a hurry and was about to make for the stairs in his wake. 

Skidding to a stop in front of Robin, she smiled warmly up at her, fresher faced and imparted, “Thanks for not waking me up. You were right, I really needed it.” 

It shouldn’t have mattered, what with the myriad states of undress they found themselves in over the past few months. And yet, the tenderness of Nancy placing a hand on one of Robin’s cheeks, rising to her tiptoes, and pressing a lingering peck to the other had her blushing two shades darker. 

They hadn’t done anything last night, obviously, and Steve had found them fully dressed. Still, she couldn’t look at him for the rest of the day. Whatever had happened was too far, she just couldn’t explain why. He didn’t notice, didn’t say a thing. Not as she scrambled to gather herself before the opening announcements. Not when she stumbled through said announcements, mispronouncing the word ‘military.’ 

Not that it would have put a stop to any of it. She couldn’t stop, not now. The look, god the look Nancy had fixed Robin with as she walked backwards towards the stairs, the gratitude in those bright, shining ocean blue eyes. What it felt like to be the one Nancy Wheeler wanted, the one she needed. Bold enough to march into the Upside Down herself and drive a stake through Vecna’s heart, or whatever pulsated in its place.  

When she started the day off with Here Comes The Rain Again by Eurhythmics, Steve hardly noticed how she ran her knuckle over her cheek, blushing all over again. Mumbling the lyrics to herself with one ear of the headphones on: I want to talk like lovers do. Want to dive into your ocean, is it raining with you?

–

The first crawl was a success. Went off without a hitch. When Hopper’s boots clomped back into the radio station basement, the cheer was thunderous. If ever they needed a renewed sense of hope that they had a fighting chance, this was the time and Robin grinned and cavorted right along with them all as they clapped hands on backs and threw arms around shoulders. 

And Nancy, oh Nancy beamed. 

From the overhead projector, their de facto leader proudly filled in the first square of their makeshift grid and quieted the group with the somber reality that they had so much more to go before they made a dent. She was right, of course. But tonight, they deserved to celebrate. 

That Robin did, crashing onto Nancy’s bed later that night in a tangle of limbs and giggling into her mouth. Her hands raced up and down her torso, over her hips, squeezing her waist where her shirt rode up. 

“You were amazing tonight,” Robin mumbled against her lips, pressing a deep kiss against them as Nancy hummed into her mouth. Her hands clinging to the base of Robin’s neck kept them flush while Nancy arched up into her. Too many layers of fabric between them getting all the friction. Robin needed some of them, preferably all of them, gone.

“I hardly did anything, really,” Nancy claimed, breathless as Robin stamped hot, open mouthed kisses down her neck. Shifting her weight to one arm, she tried to nimbly dislodge the buttons down the front of Nancy’s shirt as quickly as possible. 

“Bullshit,” Robin rebuked. The last button popping free, thank god. It was a graceless wriggle out of the shirt, aided by Robin’s eager tugs and thankfully, Nancy found the whole thing amusing. Brimming with joy, she chortled as she helped Robin pull her own t-shirt over her head, undershirt coming along with it. 

She had more to say, but Robin had to kiss her first. Kiss the smile right off of those pink, perfect lips. Run her tongue along the seam of them, pulling breathless gasps from that porcelain throat, begging to be lavished. Nancy’s skin burned so hot against her own, smoothing up against Robin’s stomach and chest, branding her with the arcs of her ribs and the little metal bow charm at the center of Nancy’s bra. 

Drawing back, she watched Nancy’s eyes slowly open and a trail of spit stretch between their mouths before it snapped. Robin licked her lips out of habit, out of hunger. 

“You amaze me, Nancy Wheeler,” she professed, laudatory and far too sincere. Nancy didn’t seem to think so, as blush crept up her cheeks and she smiled sweetly. That, and Robin felt Nancy’s legs hook around her hips, snapping them down atop her and oh, that pulled the air from her lungs. 

“Yeah?” Nancy demurred, eyes beholding Robin wondrously rapt. The darkest blue that could swallow her whole. How Robin wouldn’t fight it one bit if they did. 

Adrenaline flooding her veins and blasting her racing pulse into her ears, Robin whispered earnestly, “Every time.” 

Nancy’s smile bloomed across her cheeks, sighing as if in disbelief and stroking Robin’s jaw with her thumb. Maybe it was the high of their success, the thrill of the danger they’d all just been in hours ago, but Robin didn’t care. Her whole body hummed as she watched Nancy watch her, never breaking her attention, not once. As they chased skin and sighs and Robin kissed down her chest, she always found Nancy’s mouth agape and hair a total mess and that gaze fixed on her. Hooded or wide eyed, it held her captive.  

Until finally, Robin watched her eyes clench shut as she took Nancy over the edge with the heel of her palm. Head pitched back, hands tugging a little too hard at Robin’s chopped locks ensnared in her fists. A positively mesmerizing sight. Chest full of something voluminous and warm, how Robin ached for her, adored her, even… fuck. 

As she began to slide her fingers out, she only made it an inch before lashes fluttered and Nancy’s firm grip around her wrist locked her in place. 

“Don’t stop, not yet,” she ordered, between staccato breaths. “Keep going, please, Robin.”

This girl would be the death of Robin long before any Demogorgon got to her. Without a second thought, Robin dipped back in slowly, to her knuckle, marveling at the sweet sounds of Nancy still sensitive from mere moments ago. 

That unearthed truth lingered, just on the tip of Robin’s tongue and she swallowed it back. But that hardly mattered. As Nancy clenched tight and wet around her fingers again, Robin’s name falling from her lips in a broken plea and Robin’s jaw hung open in awe, there was no doubt about it now.

–

“Head Over Heels, huh?” 

Steve slapped the smoking gun of a cassette case against his open palm as he grinned at her conspiratorially the next morning from his post at the soundboard. Her first morning selection played softly from the headphones around Robin’s neck. 

“It’s just a song. I love Tears For Fears, you know that dingus,” Robin reasoned, spinning away from him in her chair around to fiddle with a joint on the mic arm. Which was perfectly fine, but Steve didn’t know that. 

“Uh huh, sure. Except when you dedicate that song to, what was it? Someone who caught you by surprise?” Steve cajoled her. He had a point, an unavoidable one. Wincing and gritting her teeth, she cursed herself under her breath. She was really getting far too audacious. 

“It’s not that big of a deal,” Robin brushed him off, but pushed her chair back around to face him. Arms crossed, a stray curl of Steve’s hair flopped in his eyes as he bowed his head forward in disbelief. 

“Not a big deal? Sounds like you’re really falling hard for Vickie, dude. That’s a big deal,” he insisted, with that sincere cadence that meant a session of Steve’s Dating Experience Advice was on the table. 

Oh right, Vickie. Vickie who Robin had been on a few lovely dates with, who had a cute laugh and delightfully dirty sense of humor. Whom she hadn’t seen in two weeks, after a date she’d bailed on for legitimate crawl reasons, but also who she hadn’t thought of all that much for even longer. She felt like steaming garbage for that. But how could she correct him when it was someone she was absolutely not supposed to be dedicating songs to, let alone fuck in the basement of that very building? 

She really did need to talk to someone about it, though. So might as well light her steaming garbage ass on fire. 

“I just, uh, don’t know if the feeling is mutual, you know?” she croaked. 

Shrugging, Steve wondered, “Why do you say that? She’s been saying yes to dates for months now, right?” 

“Yeah, I guess it’s been a while now,” Robin realized, brow raised as she did the math for how long Nancy and her have been…hanging out. Pressing her lips into a thin line, Robin posited, “But what if she sees it as just having fun? Like we’re just trapped here and it’s something to do to, you know, blow off steam.” 

His slow nod of recognition indicated it was a normal question to ask and she sighed through her nose with relief. Steve tapped his chin with his forefinger, eyes squinting up at nothing. 

Foot up on the desk, his hands hovered flat in the air as if he were some sort of little league coach, and asked, “Okay, well what do you get up to on your dates?” 

Oh. Well. Robin balked and that told Steve everything he needed to know. She only managed to choke out a nervous laugh before Steve waved her off. 

“Not like that, settle down,” he groaned, trying to regain control of the situation as Robin hid behind her hands. Given both their dating lives had been floundering for as long as they’d known each other, there hadn’t been much opportunity to practice this part of their friendship. Nevertheless, Steve carried on, “What I meant was how does she act around you? Like, you know, does she invite you over sometimes?” 

Robin hadn’t gone more than a week without spending the night in Nancy’s room. Nodding, Steve gestured towards her excitedly. 

“That’s good! And does she do that girl thing where she reaches for your hand when she’s scared or sad?” he offered.

“That girl thing?” Robin parroted, along with an unamused stare. 

“Alright, alright, but you know what I mean,” he moved right along. 

“Yeah, yeah, I do,” Robin relented, her attention falling to the side at the memory that flickered across her mind. Not exactly handholding, but Nancy resting her head atop Robin’s chest to lull herself to sleep on the radio basement couch had to be some sort of equivalent. Sheepishly, she looked back up at Steve through her bangs to divulge, “Yes, she does.” 

Head cocked, he smiled knowingly as he concluded, “Sounds like the feeling is mutual, dude.” 

With ease, he hoisted a crate of records up and began the trek down to the basement to store them, leaving Robin to figure out if this was good news or bad news. Time will tell, she supposed, and she pulled her headphones back on and turned up the song. 

–

Three successful crawls in, they were running on a high. No Vecna net, not a trace of him, but there was nothing quite as exhilarating as feeling like a piece of a perfectly constructed Rube Goldberg machine, watching every piece fall into place. Right underneath the noses of the purportedly airtight military operation, no less. And every time Dustin radioed that Hopper climbed back in the van, Old Man retrieved, god the rush of relief. Dangerous and painstaking as they were, Robin found herself actually looking forward to the crawls. 

The celebrations afterwards ramped up with each victory as well, for Robin at least.

After that third crawl, Nancy was so bursting with arrogance at her flawlessly executed plan that she pushed Robin up against the wall right there on the Wheeler’s upstairs landing. No one was around to see, of course, Holly’s door shut and everyone else subterranean in the basement. But anyone could have popped their head up the stairs, roused Mrs. Wheeler from her boozy slumber. The risk of discovery was beyond reckless. 

Robin couldn’t manage a protest with Nancy’s body completely flush up against hers, mouth plush and jaw cradled in her hands. Hopped up from the crawl, now every nerve ending in Robin’s body lit up, sparking at every touch. 

Once they’d advanced to the bed where she was leaving wet kisses down Nancy’s naked chest, she lifted her head to ask, in her own fog of hubris, “Can I use my mouth?” 

Nancy blinked rapidly, faced twisting in confusion as lifted her head to regard Robin. 

“Aren’t you doing that now?” she pointed out, eyes jumping between Robin’s mouth and her own body, peppered now with faint, pink splotches where Robin’s mouth had been. 

“No, well I mean yes. But I meant use my mouth…,” Robin trailed off, dropping her eyes suggestively towards Nancy’s hips still buttoned into her jeans. She needed to rectify that immediately.

Eyes bulging, Nancy sputtered, “What? That’s–you don’t, I mean, do people actually do that? I’ve never–” 

“You’ve never?” Robin gasped, trying to temper her disbelief while Nancy grew redder and redder. “Jonathan never or…Steve?” 

“Jesus, can you not mention them right now?” Nancy whined, hand running down her face.

“Sorry! Right, it’s ok. I want to if you want to,” Robin propositioned her, and Nancy mulled it over with a lip tugged beneath her canine tooth. 

Only for a beat, as a sharp nod came seconds later and Robin’s cheeks split in a crooked grin. 

“What?” Nancy hissed, with a bashful smile that was as beautiful as it was adorable. Robin felt her heart climb up her throat. 

With a shake of her head, Robin opted for humor instead and teased, “I just can’t believe I’m going where no boy has gone before.”

“Oh, shut up and just do it already,” Nancy snapped, pushing at Robin’s head as they both snickered. 

Nancy had no such reservations once Robin’s tongue was on her, inside of her, sending Nancy’s hands to grip the roots of Robin’s hair and her hips bucking into Robin’s mouth. She held a pillow over her face as she arched up off the bed, much to Robin’s dismay. But better that than the door flying open and Mike finding them in a position that they could not explain away so easily. Sliding all over Robin’s mouth and chin, she flattened her tongue and sucked Nancy into her mouth. The pillow did little to muffle the ragged cry that ripped from Nancy’s chest. So Robin made sure to do that again and again and again.

Breathless and spent, the both of them, Robin climbed back up Nancy’s body. She cataloged every ripple of Nancy’s stomach and grip of Nancy’s hand around her forearm, her eyes glassy with disbelief as she hovered over her. 

Gulping audibly, Nancy asked meekly, “Did…do I, you know…” 

Robin’s brow pinched and she shook her head, heart hammering at Nancy’s sudden bout of insecurity. What did she do? Or not do? Fuck, how badly did she mess this up?

With all her attention fixed on a lock of Robin’s straw hair that she wrapped around her finger, Nancy whispered, “Do I taste good?” 

All of the panic drained from Robin’s muscles at once, and she sighed the rest out against Nancy’s shoulder. Finally, a concern of Nancy’s Robin could eradicate herself. Notching a hooked finger beneath Nancy’s chin, she raised it to regain her attention, eyes a bolt of blue as always.  

With a showy run of her other thumb over the glossy layer of Nancy coating her own bottom lip, Robin plunged it into her own mouth, cheeks hollowing as she sucked it clean. 

Throaty and unabashedly turned on, Robin replied, “Yes.” 

– 

Just in case she hadn’t been abundantly clear, Robin queued up Just Like Honey by The Jesus and Mary Chain the next morning as her first song of the day. 

–

Robin had anticipated the effects her time with Nancy would have on her friendship with Steve, but she hadn’t expected to concern herself with Jonathan. Cruel as that sounded, she really just meant that she hardly knew the guy. They spent little time together, part of group conversations and stationed across rooms from each other at most. Nor did she have anything bad to say about him, as he seemed helpful, supportive, and quite useful. But now he was living in Nancy’s house, sleeping soundly through layers of timber and insulation while Robin had her tongue down his girlfriend’s throat a mere two floors up. 

Seeing him the next morning scooping soggy cereal into his mouth at the kitchen table was weird, to say the least. Pangs of guilt did prickle at the back of her neck when he offered her the last of the milk, or even asked how Nancy was doing. 

Not that it impeded her at all. Guilt she could easily swat away, shove into a box under her proverbial bed, especially when Nancy pulled her atop it. Nancy who only had to utter her name and Robin would come running. Everyone else fell to the wayside when it came to her, and the casualties were piling up. Steve, Jonathan, and Vickie. Sweet, jovial Vickie who was happy to see her when she did but never asked too many questions. 

It didn’t mean anything, Robin would reiterate in her mind over and over. They were having fun, blowing off steam. Those words felt flimsier every time Nancy gasped her name like Robin was the only person in the world that she wanted. Or when Robin lingered after her bones had gone molten, strewn across Nancy with her nose nuzzling her neck, Nancy’s hands dancing across her bare shoulderblades. Neither said anything at all, but what hung in the air was heavy, pulse racing like Robin had just confessed it all in a verbal vomit all over her sheets. Try as she might, Nancy Wheeler was too tempting to resist, and Robin always found her way onto her knees before her like so many other fools. 

Thankfully, that was not the position she’d found herself in when someone knocked on Nancy’s door one morning, the doorknob jiggling moments later. 

Not that gripping the rungs of her metal bed frame while Nancy drew circles between her legs beneath the covers was any better. But at least Nancy could spring from the bed and jam the lock into the doorknob before her mother flung it open. 

“Mom! Jesus, we’re getting dressed!” Nancy hollered, glancing down at her pajama shirt hanging open and scrambling to fasten the buttons up again. 

“Sorry! Just making sure you didn’t want breakfast,” Karen yelled back through the wall. 

“No thanks! We’ll grab something!” Nancy grunted. Reaching down past the edge of the bed, Robin sat up, puzzled at what she was doing, only to have her shirt from yesterday hit her in the face. 

“I kind of wanted your Mom’s pancakes, actually,” Robin whined, and earned herself a glare from Nancy as her head popped out of the top of her sweater. Hands up in surrender, Robin slid out of bed obediently with an impish grin. 

No one had ever accused Robin of being quiet, but when her feet landed on the foyer floor, Mrs. Wheeler and Joyce didn’t look up from where they were huddled together at the kitchen table. Hands clasped between them, Mrs. Wheeler giggled as she canted her head forward to bump against Joyce. Robin stood rooted to the spot, curiously watching Joyce’s thumb gently caress Mrs. Wheeler’s knuckles, furtive and hushed and springing apart cartoonishly when they both spotted her at the same time. 

“Morning,” Robin greeted them with a knowing lilt, as she turned on her heel and headed out the front door. 

–

The following night was another movie gathering in the Wheeler’s basement, Dustin holding up his chosen Star Wars and the Jedi Strikes Back or whatever to the boos and hisses of the collective group. Well, Mike cheered, and Dustin tipped his hat, literally, to his friend. 

Once the trumpets blared and the attention of the room was squarely on the television, Nancy leaned over to whisper into Robin’s ear, “Bizarre Love Triangle, huh?” 

Robin reeled, head hitting the back of the couch where Nancy had Robin squished up against the arm. 

“I didn’t know you even knew that song,” she hissed, eyeing Nancy curiously. She’d been certain that morning that it would go over her head. Always full of surprises, that Nancy Wheeler. 

Rolling her eyes, Nancy pressed her lips into a thin line before revealing in a hoarse whisper, “Actually, Jonathan really likes that song.” 

A shared look passed between them, and they dissolved into muffled giggles. It felt criminal laughing at that, but the irony was too good. They got reprimanded anyway by Dustin, who turned around in the front, with pure disdain on his face, and promptly shushed them. 

–

The rubber soles of Robin’s sneakers skidded to a squeaky halt on the linoleum floor of the hospital hallway. 

“Nance! Jesus, you scared me. What are you doing here?” Robin gasped, hand to her chest at the sight of Nancy. No one else paid them any mind. White coated doctors dodging them, noses glued to their clipboards. Nurses barked orders while weaving IV drips in between patrons. As hectic as a six lane highway, pagers beeping and phones ringing and fluorescent lights humming above and in the center of it all, Nancy stood there idly with her arms crossed. 

“Delivering baked goods for the injured from my Mom and her friends,” Nancy answered, nonchalantly nodding her head back at the crate of muffins and cookies on the reception desk. Brow raised, she asked in return, “What are you doing here?” 

“Nothing! Visiting a friend,” Robin recovered, voice rising to the tell-tale pitch of dishonesty. 

With impeccably cruel timing, Vickie chose that moment to push her cart of books past the two of them, smiling as sunny as ever. 

“Hey Rob. Oh hey Nancy!” she greeted them both, with a perky little wave before moving right along. Robin watched realization brighten Nancy’s face, her lips pursed and her head nodding slowly. 

“Friend?” she taunted her, eyes narrowing as Robin ran a hand through her hair. Before she could come up with something clever to say, Nancy drummed her fingers against her bicep and asked, “You into that? The candy striper outfit?” 

The garbled laugh that burst from Robin’s mouth was not exactly a denial. Still, Robin managed to mutter as a group of nurses passed by, “You’re not jealous, are you Nance?” 

Nancy’s scoff wasn’t a denial either, and she swiftly breezed past that to ask, “How are you guys doing? You know, Steve told me you were worried about Vickie not returning your feelings for her. Says you keep dedicating songs to her like a despondent puppy.” 

Snickering, Robin quipped, “Steve used the word ‘despondent’?” 

Nancy snorted, in spite of herself. 

“Well, no, but that was basically what he meant,” she amended. 

“Maybe I am dedicating songs to Vickie,” Robin posited with a shrug. 

“Oh yeah? Which ones?” Nancy raised, with a haughty cock of her head. 

Robin took a step closer, with enough height on her to force Nancy to look up at her. It might’ve gone to her head a little, too.

“Yeah, you’re definitely jealous, Wheeler,” Robin challenged her, and catching the corner of Nancy’s mouth twitch was enough to confirm that. So she dug in just a little more and recounted, “I thought we were just having fun? Blowing off steam?” 

Hearing her own words thrown back at her was enough to make Nancy recoil, blinking as her eyes darted around the bustling hospital. Gathering herself, she pulled at the bottom of her jacket to straighten it out. 

“Of course we are,” she agreed, hardly convincing herself as she was barely able to look Robin in the eye. It was a little disappointing that she backed down so quickly, Robin had to admit, and she softened at Nancy’s retreat. Almost like she’d hit a sore spot, one that hadn’t been there before. Clearing her throat as she began to head back towards the doors, Nancy asked, “My place tonight? To go over the, um, stuff?” 

“Sure,” Robin acquiesced, with none of the bite from before. She shook her head fondly as Nancy scurried as quickly as she could out of the hospital. Jealous, huh? 

If Robin had any doubts, due to her limited experience with women or seeded by her still fluctuating self esteem, they were driven from her mind that night on Nancy’s bed. Wrists pinned above her head, Nancy’s palms pressing them into the satin pillowcase, Robin had never seen her so aggressive. Not in a bad way, though, not at all. Her bruising kisses were mind numbing and the weight of Nancy atop her hips made her thighs clench. To be desired like this was intoxicating, her shirt shoved up by Nancy’s calloused hands and skin grazed by her blunt nails. She only unbuttoned Robin’s jeans before shoving her hand where she was needed most, her movements quick and sharp and greedy, making Robin’s lungs stall and her hips shake. She didn’t protest one bit. 

Except when she felt the sharp pinch of Nancy’s teeth latching onto her neck. Enough to leave a crimson, mouth-shaped mark. As much as it sent a warm jolt right to her stomach, it was too high for a sweater to cover, and she had none of the turtlenecks that filled Nancy’s dresser drawer. 

“Nance,” she gasped, “I won’t be able to hide that.” 

Robin felt her soothe it with her tongue before she rose up to hover over her. 

With a wicked smirk bearing her canine, Nancy uttered definitively, “Good.” 

–

It didn’t go unnoticed by Steve, of course. The hickey, along with Robin’s selection of Only You by Yazoo, had him giving her the thumbs up the next morning. 

“Guess you got your answer, huh?” he surmised, a celebratory tone lifting his voice. 

“You could say that,” Robin replied, demurely. 

Although she really just wanted to know that Nancy heard the song, that she understood what Robin was trying to say. That answer did come later that afternoon during another planning session. They needed to tweak a few things after one too many close calls last time. The modifications were minor, but Nancy was positively walking on air as she presented them at her overhead projector. Enough that Robin wasn’t the only one who noticed, and Dustin’s snarky comment got himself an equally snappy reply. Robin was the only one who laughed, and Nancy glanced at her, lingered a little too long, lips curled into a smile a little too smug. 

Whether her plans were airtight or not, Robin was certain that cocky grin had nothing to do with them. 

–

As it turned out, her plans had not been airtight. 

No one could blame Nancy, really. How were they to know the convoy would go off course? The van crew lost the signal, Hopper’s walkie went dark. It was a long forty-five minute standstill in that station as they waited for an update. The air still and suffocating, Nancy chewed their nails down to the quick. And Joyce, clutching Eleven who whimpered on the couch, whispering shaky words of comfort and running her hands up and down the poor girl’s flannel shirt. 

Lucas’ crackling voice came through the radio like a bolt of lightning, jolting everyone into action as they swarmed the desk. 

“The Old Man is right side up! I repeat, the Old Man is right side up!” 

Cries of relief flood the cavernous room, Joyce clutching the radio microphone and frantically grilling the boys for more details. Eleven and Jonathan huddled around her and Nancy…

Robin searched the room for that curly mop of hair and only saw her dirt-caked Keds hurrying up the stairs. Something in her twinged, an urge to chase after her, but she knew better. If Nancy wanted company, she would be down there with everyone else. What she did in her alone time Robin hadn’t the foggiest, but it was best to let her have it. 

With a sigh, Robin tore her longing stare from the door and hopped up on the edge of the desk, taking in all the excitement with the rest of the gang. 

 Until that alone time turned into some sort of self imposed isolation, so bad that Jonathan asked if Robin had spoken to her a few days later. Nobody had, and nobody was champing at the bit to check on her. Robin made a point to do it herself, then. 

And so she found herself on the precipice of Nancy’s bedroom, stricken with nerves all over again but for a completely different reason this time. Dragging her out of her cave was sure to earn her a few claw marks to show for it. Sighing deeply, Robin steadied herself and turned the knob. 

Not locked, surprisingly, and Nancy didn’t seem surprised to see her either. With a weary glance up from her bed, she threw her a nod and returned to the book she was reading. Maneuver Warfare Handbook. Robin decided she wouldn’t ask where she got that. 

“Hey,” she chirped. 

“Hey,” Nancy replied. Polite, clipped. Unwelcome to say the least. Robin gulped. 

“It’s been a while since you’ve come around the station. Everyone is worried about you, but of course they’re all too scared to talk to you. Figured it would make you feel better to know you inspire fear in all of your infantrymen,” Robin prattled, adding a few forced chuckles to keep it light. 

With a tight smile, Nancy looked up at her mercifully and informed her, “I do like knowing that, actually. But I’m fine. No need to worry.” 

Although not always her strong suit, it was glaringly apparent to Robin that Nancy had ended the conversation and would very much like her leave. She would not back down so easily nor did a little agitation deter her, unfortunately for Nancy. Taking a few steps forward, she hoisted herself up onto the edge of the bed. 

“Nancy,” she tried, but Nancy insisted on intently reading the same page over and over. Boldly, Robin reached for her left hand, where it laid on the bedspread. Softly, she began again, “Nance, don’t beat yourself up over this. Nobody blames you.” 

Nostrils flaring, Nancy mumbled, “Well they should. I didn’t pay close enough attention.”

“How were you to know the convoy would go the other way? We don’t even know what happened down there. Things happen!” Robin reasoned, with a gentle squeeze of her hand. 

Not the right move, apparently. Eyes snapping up to Robin, loaded with daggers, she snatched her hand away. 

“Things happen? Robin, things happen when you’re baking a cake. Something went wrong and a man almost died!” Nancy hissed, as Robin twisted a ring on one of her fingers. 

“But he didn’t! He’s fine, we’re all fine, and we can try again–” 

“He didn’t die because thank god he’s a fucking combat veteran and he knows his shit,” Nancy spat. She swung her legs off of the bed and began pacing, madly. “More than me, anyway. I barely know what I’m doing, and I wasn’t paying attention.” 

Robin held her hands up, like she was approaching a wild animal, and slowly slid off the bed. 

“He was a–a foot soldier kid in a pointless war. You know just as much as him, are you kidding me? Probably more,” she told her, calmly and steadily approaching.

“Yeah, well I missed something or, I don’t know. I was distracted,” Nancy insisted, waving the book around, thumb still holding her place. 

“Nobody could have known,” Robin cooed, reaching Nancy’s path and standing in her way before she ran a hole in the carpet. With extreme caution, she slid her hand up her cheek to cradle her hardened jaw, and begged, “Please don’t blame yourself.” 

Eyes flitting down like a skittish cat, Nancy stepped back, out of Robin’s reach. 

“What are you doing?” she asked, eyes wild and mussed hair even wilder. 

“I… I just thought that since…” 

“Since what?” 

It hit Robin like a slap, and she reared back. Nancy saw her falter, and advanced on her. Wrong move again.

“You were a distraction, too, a dangerous one, and look at what it almost cost us?” Nancy concluded. If that was a slap before, this was a sucker punch. Robin could barely breathe. Nancy had the decency to turn away from her at least and reach for her bookmark on the nightstand. 

When she finally choked out a wet laugh, Robin felt the sympathy she had arrived with ice over into bitterness and fired back, “A distraction? Why? Because you clearly have feelings for me?” 

Nancy spun on her heel, face stricken with bewilderment. 

“I…wh-what? That’s not true!” she sputtered, and Robin just nodded with an assured smile, tongue pressed against her teeth. 

“It bothers you that I’m dating Vickie, but then you won’t fully break up with Jonathan either,” Robin listed, holding up a finger for each count against her. “And I’m the one who comforts you, the one you tell your problems to, nevermind the one you call when you want to get off.” 

Fists at her side, Nancy rounded on her and snarled, “My feelings? What about you? Dedicating songs to me, love songs, on the radio! Every week! But you won’t admit to it, won’t even tell your best friend.” 

Robin scowled at the sting of that one, shaking her head as her eyes burned. Nancy’s glare just flashed electric blue. 

“And you hide with Vickie because the poor girl is blissfully ignorant of all of this!” she carried on, throwing her arms in the air wildly. “She’s easy. To talk to and pretend with and you’re a coward.” 

With a firm pointed finger, she jammed the last word into Robin’s shoulder. It wasn’t hard enough to do any damage, or push her much at all. But it landed just the same. Robin just stood there in the quiet house, living room television blaring downstairs even through the closed door. Nose twitching as Nancy stared right back at her, chest heaving and a quivering frown threatening to crack. 

An anger boiled over inside of Robin, and she wanted to be the one to crack it. Coward. She had been a coward for a long time, but she wasn’t anymore. So she did. 

“Yeah, well, you would know. Leading Steve on, keeping Jonathan on the hook, afraid you’re going to end up just like your mother no matter who you choose,” Robin cooly countered, voice hoarse but venomous just the same. With a step forward, she sneered at Nancy down her nose and fired the final shot, “Married to a man she was too polite to leave when she could because she was afraid of actually loving someone and losing them. Looks like you’re already there.” 

With a single blink, two tears dribbled down Nancy’s cheeks. Robin’s mouth twisted in remorse, but wouldn’t give Nancy the satisfaction. Bloody and bruised, they remained there, at a standstill. Throats constricting and eyes watering until Robin yielded first and broke out into a run. Down the stairs, past a startled Mrs. Wheeler and out the door, knocking her shin on her bike pedal as she hurried off. 

–

They didn’t speak for two weeks.

–

It wasn’t that Robin didn’t try to talk to Nancy, because she did. She tried casually approaching her after a planning debrief, throwing an aloof Hey at her but it got swatted away with a glare. A movie night not that long after she cornered her in the Wheeler’s kitchen, stretching to grab a bag of chips from a high cabinet shelf. This time, Robin’s Hey was soft with surrender, head bowed with her tail between her legs. Nancy took one look at her and walked the long way around the kitchen island, bag of chips in her clenched hand. 

After that, Robin simply let her stew. Why should Robin be the one to apologize? Nancy started it, lashing out at her first when Robin was trying to help. If she wanted to hold a grudge, then so be it. Robin was fine before they started all this and she would be fine if they never spoke again. 

Except she wasn’t fine. Nancy plagued her thoughts nearly every day. Her twinkling laugh echoed in Robin’s skull in the quiet halls of the sleepy Squawk station. Robin’s nose chased the phantom scent of her shampoo around corners at Steve’s house. Worst of all, perhaps, were the flashes of her shimmering blue eyes, betrayed and watery from that night, haunting her in the moments right before Robin drifted off to sleep. She had to do something, whether she liked it or not, lest she go insane. 

It was a long shot, and a tad manipulative, but Robin was at her wits end. The only way she could reach Nancy these days was the one avenue she was forced to listen to; the radio. It would either piss her off even more and drive her away forever, or it would come off charming. Either outcome was about as predictable as a coinflip, so Robin tossed the penny into the air so to speak. 

First up was Space Age Love Song by A Flock of Seagulls. Over the airwaves, Robin laid it out there, plain and simple. I saw your eyes and you made me smile. And for a little while, I was falling in love. No frills, but to the point. 

Two days later, Nancy brushed past her pointedly when she saw her at the grocery store, but that was about it. She returned home emptyhanded, well save for the bread and milk and Doritos in the grocery bags. She did forget the ice cream her Dad had wanted, though, and he playfully bopped her on the head with his newspaper. 

It’s My Life by Talk Talk was her choice the next day. Aloof still, because she had an image to maintain of course, but a bit more insistent. She couldn’t get more forthcoming than Funny how I find myself in love with you. 

Nancy didn’t seem to find such a confession by proxy all that interesting. She didn’t even show up to game night at the Byer’s house. Mike explained they had car trouble, hence why he arrived on his bike. Right. 

She threw anything at the wall after that. All I Need Is A Miracle, going the more apologetic route. Or perhaps Love Will Tear Us Apart, throwing herself on her sword in a fit of angst. Age of Consent, just prone, depressed desperation. 

Steve genuinely checked on her after that one, locking the passenger door as he sat in her driveway that night after her ride home. She assured him she was fine, just the quarantine getting to her. He could understand that, and gave her a shoulder pat and a pep talk. Snow began to fall around them in the car, silent and glittering in the headlights. Robin joked about how some Hawkins kids had taken to sledding down the metal plates over the fissures in the ground, and now they’ll be grateful for some actual snow. Steve suggested they take a day off Vecna hunting and try it for themselves. Snow and metal would make for a killer slope. 

It was thoughtful, kind, like he’d grown to be the further he got from high school and it only made Robin feel that much more like shit for lying to him for this long. 

After a particularly sleepless night where Nancy’s baby blues dogged her once again, Robin pulled Your Eyes out of the cassette pile. Snickering to herself, she turned it over in her hand. It would be a hail mary, that’s for sure. Nevermind how much it would compromise her integrity as a connoisseur of music for the pedestrians of central Indiana. Why the hell not. 

Robin could hardly believe it when she saw Nancy strolling up the radio station walkway at closing that night, right as they were locking up. 

She gave a nod to Steve, to which he saluted and said, “Girl stuff, I know.” 

As his BMW crawled down the drive and into the black, wintery night, Nancy tugged her puffer jacket around herself and blinked up at Robin expectantly. 

“Right! Sorry, it’s super cold so let's, you know, go inside,” Robin babbled, jamming the key back into the door and shouldering it open. She led them mindlessly down to the basement, and slowed to a heel kicking stop in the center of the room. Nancy’s snow boots thunked down the last few steps and crunched across the concrete until they were right behind her. It took Robin a few shaky breaths before she clenched her eyes shut and turned around. 

Nancy wasn’t angry, for once, which was a relief. Her pursed lips twisted nervously, and she watched Robin, waiting for something but Robin wouldn’t ruin this by speaking first. Eventually, Nancy opened her mouth. 

“Really? Peter Gabriel? Kind of commercial for you, don’t you think? Obvious?” she gibed, a smirk crawling up her cheek. Robin had missed those, the tension in her shoulders easing a bit at the sight. 

“Sometimes it’s best to be obvious,” Robin volleyed, chin lifting as they fell back into step as if nothing happened. Robin tried not to focus too much on what that meant for them. 

Nancy played with the cuff of her coat and extended the first olive branch with, “I’m glad you played it, and all the others before it. That you let me know how you feel. And I know I totally freaked out on you but it wasn’t about that, I swear. I was just…”

As she trailed off, she looked up at the projector and the collection of papers coating the desk and Robin knew this was her best apology. She didn’t have to explain, it was enough. As her own form of peace offering, Robin picked up the slack for her. Sauntering around the room, hands behind her back, she wandered over to the desk and leaned back against it. 

“It was stupid to bring up the boys,” Robin conceded with a deep nod. “You told me how much you hate that topic and how everyone else brings it up all the time and I just threw it in your face.” 

Nancy shoved her hands into her pockets and shrugged, admitting, “What you said was kind of true though.” 

“Doesn’t matter. I shouldn’t make you feel like shit about it,” Robin argued, watching her stroll over to the arm of the couch. She mirrored Robin, leaning back against it and there they stood, a chasm of dead air between them. 

“I feel like shit about it anyway, all of it, with or without your help,” Nancy joked, with a fading smile. Robin hated it, wanted to scold her for being so hard on herself, smack herself for being a voice in that choir. She knew Nancy well enough to know that wasn’t what she wanted to hear, and Robin could at least honor that. 

“If it helps, when it comes to Steve I can be a little overprotective and vicious, no matter who it is. I really didn’t mean it, okay? I just don’t like seeing him get hurt,” she tried to explain, but Nancy chuckled darkly. Face crunched in confusion, Robin laughed nervously and asked, “What?”

“Nothing! I just…if you don’t like seeing him hurt then why did you kiss me back?” she asked, genuinely curious and devoid of malice. And a question she’d been asking herself for months now, although she was pretty sure she knew the answer. Nancy had to know it too, with all the songs aimed at her. Maybe this was her way of getting her to admit it, asking without asking, cornering her like the budding journalist she was. Two could play that game. 

Biting her lip, Robin threw it right back at her, wondering aloud, “Why did you kiss me in the first place?” 

Nancy shook her head, but couldn’t squash the amused smile contorting her lips. Pensively, she let her eyes rove freely across Robin as she pieced together whatever she wanted to say. Mouth falling open and snapping shut, rolling her lips inward. 

Finally, she said wistfully, “I had to know.” 

At that, Robin nodded slowly. 

“I had to know, too,” Robin concurred, and Nancy laughed through her nose. She should leave it at that, an endless game of chicken exchanging quips and taunts and song dedications. But something in the way Nancy kept staring at her, warm with affection and full of everything Robin wanted, she just couldn’t help herself. That, and she would have driven herself crazy the rest of her life. So, head bowed inquisitively, Robin quite literally begged the question, “And?” 

Nancy looked about as shocked as Robin felt at her own gutsiness. In spite of her heart hammering in her ears, Robin held steady and raised a brow. In the silence, Nancy’s initial reaction melted into a wide eyed, open longing that Robin had never seen grace her sharp little features before. She caught Nancy’s hands clenching the fabric of the couch, her two front teeth worrying her bottom lip. All the while, looking, really looking at Robin so rapt that she felt more naked standing there fully clothed than she did any night in Nancy’s bed. The desperate sigh it all pulled from Nancy’s lips was more of an answer than Nancy’s words could have given her. It was all Robin could do to smile, small and pained but hopefully a small comfort. 

Picking at the seam of the couch cushion blindly, Nancy mused, “Maybe I am a coward.” 

“Nance–”

A shake of her head, and Robin snapped her mouth shut. 

“Maybe I am, because I don’t know if I’ll ever let anyone have all of me,” Nancy clarified, with a one shoulder shrug. “Steve or Jonathan or…anyone.” 

Nancy fixed that last word right across Robin’s chest. 

“That just feels so impossible to think about right now, you know?” Nancy implored, and Robin nodded solemnly. With a twinkle in her eye, Nancy added, “So, maybe ask me in a year?” 

Snickering, a grin wormed its way across Robin’s face. She pushed herself off the desk and back onto two feet, straightening her mustard sweater and trying not to let her shriveling stomach sink her smile. 

“Yeah, I get that,” she told her, and she did. Nancy’s brow gathering with appreciation confirmed she believed her. Robin was about to clap her hands together and suggest they go see what Steve was up to when Nancy stepped forward, chest full of a preemptive inhale. 

“For what it’s worth,” she began, with a secretive lilt that promised it would be worth Robin’s while. “You had more of me than anyone ever has before, maybe more than anyone ever will.” 

Robin’s heart practically soared, and if her ankles could sprout wings, she herself might have soared around the basement. 

Straightening up proudly, Robin grinned and said, “I can live with that.” 

Nancy beamed and Robin could kiss her. Unspoken as it was, she figured that was no longer on the table. Eyes dropping to Robin’s mouth, Nancy seemed to have a similar idea on her mind, and she beat her to it. 

“Will you kiss me one last time? What could it hurt, you know?” Nancy propositioned, stepping closer as her tongue poked out to wet her lips. 

“Totally, and I swear I’ll never tell anyone about this,” Robin hurriedly assured her, shuffling just the bit closer. “Why hurt him? Them. Right?” 

“Right,” Nancy echoed, tugging Robin closer by her itchy, knitted collar. Her mouth, wet and hot, pressed against Robin’s winter-chapped lips. Lingering far too long, and breathing far too ragged when they parted. 

Gulping down the last of her nerves, Robin muttered, “Is that all you want?”

Looking up at her through those lethal hooded eyes, Nancy shook her head. 

And Robin, well she didn’t waste another second. Launching forward, she kissed that smile off Nancy’s face, and oh did Nancy kiss her back. Open and starved, crashing into her again and again, engulfing her entirely. Robin heard herself moan into it, how she’d missed how slick and soft it was, how it tasted sharp like the ginger snap cookies Nancy loved so much. Without hesitation, her hands encircled Nancy’s waist beneath her coat and held her close, while Nancy’s hands clung to her neck, clawed at the back of it. 

They just managed to strip Nancy of her coat as they tumbled onto the couch. Teeth clacking, they erupted in giggles, Robin’s head dropping to Nancy’s shoulder. So warm and the skin so smooth and she kissed her way up, along her jaw and back down the valley of her chest as she unbuttoned each button slowly. She would savor this last time. Commit every sound, every heady look down her nose at Robin like the one she gave their right then, to memory. 

Since the Midwest chill had seeped down even to the basement, Robin pulled the throw blanket on the back of the couch over them. It was large enough to make a tent out of, fleece and feather soft on her bare skin as Robin rocked against her thigh, dancing her fingertips down her spine. Their body heat trapped between them and skin singed, sticky with sweat, Robin didn’t want to feel anything but Nancy adhered to her, chest to her thighs, arched up into her, legs cinched around her hips. She didn’t want to hear anything other than how Nancy keened for her, begged for her, pouring the sweetest sounds into her ear, pants and gasps of Robin, oh god, Robin, right there, fuck oh god yeah, don’t stop. Don’t. Stop. 

Their cocoon of heat only broke somewhere during round three, when Nancy flipped them, Robin’s fingers still buried inside of her to the knuckle. She braced herself against Robin’s shoulders, knees swallowed by the couch, and rolled her hips, over and over and over. Only then did the blanket cascade down from her shoulders like some kind of Greek goddess from Robin’s dreams. Moony eyed, she watched Nancy take and take whatever she wanted and gave it willingly, knelt at her altar, arching her wrist up into her so she could grind out broken moans that ricocheted against the walls and quivering, stuttering hips. 

Mouth and teeth greedy and ravenous, teasing and buoyant with laughter when she buckled in Robin’s arms, hair a frizzy mess of curls and cheeks splotchy. Nancy Wheeler, neat as a pin, unraveled by Robin’s hands. This was her Nancy, Robin’s Nancy, the one nobody else got to have.

—

So when Robin watched the boys compete for her attention, she merely shook her head and chuckled to herself. They could peacock around town, lifting things and racing each other across distances. Still, it was Robin who Nancy called when she wanted to go over a plan before presenting it to the group. It was Robin who climbed into Nancy’s chalky pink sheets when she was nervous, shaken by a close call, or plagued with bloody visions of the past and dread of massacres to come. To sleep, only sleep, albeit waking up a bit tangled up in each other from time to time. 

They could compete as much as they liked, climb like circus monkeys up the radio tower even. With a smug grin she would share a knowing glance with Nancy who would only roll her eyes and graze her shoulder playfully as she walked away before a victor was crowned. She knew they were only competing for second place and that Robin could absolutely live with.