Chapter Text
The first time they get together in her weird uncle's basement, Robin is nervous.
It's not like she isn't comfortable with Steve and Jonathan and Nancy — she is, more comfortable than she's ever been with most of the friends she's held in her lifetime — it's that everything is different now. They're all grown, with no more monsters lurking around corners and under beds, and the very thing that kept them so close for so long is just gone.
Ripped away.
She invites Vickie too, because she's trying to make more of an effort to include her girlfriend in her friend group, and Vickie was there for a lot of it too.
Vecna.
Vickie can't come, though — mostly because she's busy with work and in part because she's never really felt like a real part of their friend group — and Robin sort of wishes that she were there because she's a little less nervous when Vickie is around.
Robin has survived inter dimensional monsters, run ins with the KGB, and at least a dozen brushes with death.
She can totally handle an awkward hangout with friends.
It isn't all that bad, really.
It's awkward at first for sure, and Robin is sure that she talks at least a mile a minute for the first hour that they're together, but then Jonathan and Steve go off to inspect the boiler room and Nancy smirks at her and pulls out a bottle of whiskey and they fall into the couch and it all feels like it did back then.
Without the gross flesh-blob monsters and the Russians, of course.
She says it to Nancy when she's halfway to tipsy and her tongue is a little looser than it usually is, and Nancy laughs brightly like everything they went through is average teenage activity.
Robin has never been more thankful for her sense of humor.
"You can't say you don't miss it, Robs." Nancy laughs, a bit to herself, and she glances over towards the boiler room where they can hear Jonathan and Steve making various explosion noises with their mouths. "It wasn't all bad. We had fun."
Robin laughs too, because it's the most ridiculous thing she's ever heard.
Because in a way, Nancy is right.
She misses the little moments in between all of the fighting and brushes with death — misses when she could blurt out just about anything and no one would make fun of her, misses the after of it all when they could relax for just a bit and feel like normal teenagers — and she misses having real friends most of all.
"Fun is subjective." Robin says, her tone a little serious but the smile tugging at the corners of her mouth betrays her. "You weren't captured by the KGB."
Nancy grins, and Robin gets this warm feeling all over because she can finally talk to someone about everything.
Her new friends would never understand.
"Fair." Nancy says, pours a bit more whiskey in her glass. She motions for Robin to hold her glass out — she thinks it might be a bad idea, her head is already a bit cloudy, but she holds it out anyways because Nancy has never steered her wrong before. "I just shot a lot of guns."
She's downplaying the severity of it all, Robin recognizes it for what it is, and she doesn't say anything about it because yeah, she knows just how heavy the topic is.
"A lot of guns." She says instead, because Robin has always had the unexplainable urge to fill every quiet space with noise. It's quite fitting that she works at a radio station, isn't it? "Like, more guns than any teenager should ever have shot."
It was a bit fun though, she thinks, if you put all of the near-death experiences aside.
Robin really misses hanging out with them.
"Guys." Steve says, bursting back into the makeshift living room area with Jonathan hot on his trail. "It's perfect! Like… you know Tammy Thompson from high school? Me and Jon were thinking—"
He's cut off by Nancy, smiling all smart in her casual sweater and slacks.
"Jonathan and I, Steve." She corrects him smoothly, delights in the way he rolls his eyes before she's even done speaking. "Carry on."
Yeah, Robin has missed this.
"Okay, so me and Jon were thinking…" He sort of trails off, hones in on the brown liquid in their cups. "Where the fuck did you guys get booze?"
Nancy holds the bottle up above her head, like Steve can't reach that high, and he pouts a bit pathetically. If Robin closes her eyes and uses her imagination enough, it's almost like it was back then — without the kids, of course, and without all of the monsters — and it's good, still good, and easy as ever.
Robin wonders if Nancy is going to pour him a drink.
"Wouldn't you like to know." She says instead, and she passes the bottle over to Jonathan.
He pours a drink for Steve because of course he does, and Robin rolls her eyes directly at Nancy sort of like it's a joke between the two of them. She supposes it is, in a way, because they've been making fun of the boys for years.
Robin, the man hating lesbian.
Nancy, the eternal misandrist.
"Nance." Steve says, all whiny in the way he only is with their friend group. "Robin's rolling her eyes at us."
Jonathan takes the glass bottle of amber liquid — it's not expensive whiskey but it's also not cheap, good enough to get them well and buzzed — and he pours a cup for himself and Steve.
Nancy rolls her eyes.
"Now we're both rolling our eyes at you." She says, sort of indignant in the way that only Nancy Wheeler is. Robin admires that about her — the way she speaks her mind and doesn't really bend to the meek, timid expectations most people have of her. "Are you guys done with your torrid love affair now? We've been waiting to watch the movie."
Jonathan had rented Dead Poets Society from the video store in New York, brought it down with him with full intention of them watching it until Nancy had rolled her eyes and said she wasn't watching his 'stuck up cinephile bullshit' and decided that they were watching Blue Velvet instead.
Robin only shrugs in agreement when Nancy demands they watch it.
Laura Dern is like, super hot in that movie anyways.
Vickie doesn't come up from Hawkins nearly as much as Robin hopes she will.
She doesn't really see much of a problem with staying — he's gone, Vickie says when Robin says she can't stomach visiting Hawkins very often, nothing bad is going to happen here — but Vickie wasn't really present for all of it, didn't spend the better part of her teenage years living in fear, so Robin supposes she understands Vickie's logic.
Still, it hurts.
Is it so bad to want her girlfriend to visit every now and again?
It's Halloween and Robin wants nothing more than to bring Vickie to the stupid party that the radio station is hosting, but she's studying for another test or something of the sort that Robin doesn't quite remember, and she tries to push away the pangs of loneliness and the questioning of what she did wrong.
It's always her fault.
She's always done something wrong.
You talk too much, Robin Buckley, she can hear her mother say in the back of her mind, you won't have a single friend if you don't learn to shut your mouth.
She thinks that if she did have any friends — any real friends, the sort that wouldn't mind if she talked too much or spoke too loudly — Steve and Nancy would be the ones that counted.
She doesn't call Steve or Nancy to invite them to the Halloween party, but she really wants to.
She wonders if they'd come — if they'd drive all the way over for a night at a mediocre party at her work — and she likes to think that at least one of them would. But they're adults with lives and real jobs now, and the world doesn't afford them the luxury of running around and saving the world together anymore.
And thank god for that, really.
"When are we finally gonna meet your girl?" Her coworker Jesse says, and she knows he means well.
They chat back and forth sometimes while he shelves the records and CDs and she hosts her show, and he's one of the first people at the station that she told about the fact that she has a girlfriend. He didn't really react, actually, and Robin wonders what part of herself gave it away so easily. Jesse says it's the way she calls half of the female movie stars they discuss 'really fucking hot', but Robin thinks it has something to do with the way she dresses.
She doesn't think she's that obvious, though.
"She's stuck in Hawkins studying for another exam." It's not an answer because she doesn't have one — Vickie hasn't visited in over three months, anyways — but it's not a non-answer, either. "You know my girl is smart."
She can't help but brag, though.
Her girlfriend is hot and a genius.
Someone hands her a beer — her other coworker Maya, the one who hosts a morning show and plays mostly upbeat pop music — and she takes a long sip from it, mostly to center herself.
"It's Halloween." Jesse says, sort of like this should mean that everyone has the day off to get drunk. "She has to study today?"
Yeah, it sounds a bit stupid to Robin too.
"And work too." Robin says. "There's a whole real world that has to function today. That's what happens when you're an adult, dingus."
There's a comfortable silence that settles over the group, and Robin finds herself wondering if these people could ever be as good of friends as the ones she had in Hawkins. She likes them, sure, and she even likes the girls she sits with in her linguistics lectures, but it's just not the same.
She doesn't think it ever will be.
Is that such a bad thing?
"You didn't wanna go back to Hawkins to see her? I'm sure someone would've taken your shift."
Robin knows Jesse means well, but she really wishes he would shut the fuck up.
Her show is always late in the evenings, usually stretching into the early hours of the morning when Robin is quite certain that only she herself is listening, and she knows that plenty of her coworkers would have stepped up to take her shift, but how does she explain the insanity that is Hawkins?
How does she explain her high school years?
"No, no, it's fine." She starts to feel like everything is actually not fine. "Vickie had to work anyways. I wouldn't have seen her for long if I even went."
Robin tries not to dwell on it, really, but she can't help but feel like she's done something wrong with Vickie. Why doesn't she want to come visit her more?
Why doesn't she want to come to a work party with her?
Is she embarrassed of her?
"Damn, that sucks." Jesse says, and Robin takes a long sip of beer and nods in agreement. "Must be hard having a smart ass girlfriend."
Wouldn’t you like to know, Robin wants to say, but she sort of just shrugs and takes another sip from her drink and thanks her lucky stars that she doesn't have to work tonight. If she's lucky, she'll get to slip out without much issue and spend the rest of her night in bed.
She misses Vickie.
She misses her so, so deeply.
"Yeah." She says, because she can't talk about Hawkins with these people — they just won't get it. "Sucks."
Robin has a bad habit of not maintaining her friendships well.
Call it some sort of weird trauma from always being too much for all of her friends, but she never reaches out first and she never, never plans anything. Maybe that's the reason she's never really had real friends, the fact that she doesn't put in enough effort.
Or maybe she's just too much in all the wrong ways.
Either way, whatever is wrong with her somehow makes her unable to reach out to Nancy and Steve and Jonathan first and she feels, for the first time since moving out of Hawkins, truly alone. She can't quite settle on the why of it all, but that unsettling sort of feeling of wrong crawls under her skin and burrows in so deeply that she can't even force herself into work — calls in with a little white lie about going back to Hawkins to visit Vickie.
No one has to know, it's not like her coworkers have any way of checking.
She spends her day on her weird uncle's couch — her uncle Sean doesn't really mind, anyways, and he's always glad to have a little extra company around the house, even if she's holed up in the basement alone — and she reruns the same few comfort movies over and over and over again, the ones she and Steve used to watch when they worked at Family Video.
Fast Times.
Gremlins.
The Goonies.
The Princess Bride.
Steve always pretended he wasn't choked up watching the Princess Bride and Robin always teased him about it. She sort of misses it, really.
She hears the landline ring through her haze of deep thought and comfort movies and wallowing and great, even her weird uncle Sean has more friends than her.
Pathetic.
There's footsteps above her head, and Robin thinks it's kind of funny that he's a nervous pacer too. There's a sort of drag path at her parents house from where she would walk back and forth and back and forth while on the phone, as far as the stretchy cord of the phone could reach.
"Robbie?" Sean steps to the basement door and shouts down to her. "You've got a friend on the line."
A friend.
God, she hopes it's not one of those idiots from the radio station that has nothing better to do than harass her about her love life — she's beginning to think that they don't think Vickie is actually real, not that she blames them for it — but there's a chance that it's someone else, someone she actually considers a friend enough to search her out and call her, and it makes her curious enough to actually want to pick up.
"I've got it!" She yells back up the stairs, because she doesn't really want to go up just to answer him and Sean doesn't really mind being hollered to the way her parents do. "I won't be too long."
She doesn't want to occupy his line anyways.
"Don't worry about it." He says, and the basement door clicks shut behind him.
His footsteps move from the basement door and track across her head, and Robin has to sort of psyche herself up to answer the phone because she's a bit nervous — always in a perpetual state of anxiety no matter what, and she does blame all the monster hunting for that
"Hello?" She says, and there's a soft click on the line that tells her Sean has put down the receiver that was up and holding the call.
She's immensely grateful that the basement phone cord stretches all the way to the couch.
"Robin, hi."
It's Nancy.
Phone distorted and crackly Nancy, but Nancy all the same.
"Nance! Oh my gosh, hi."
There's a sound from the other end of the line, and Robin can tell that Nancy is sort of clicking her tongue in mock disappointment.
"Do you know how long I've been trying to call you?" She doesn't, but she has the feeling that Nancy is going to tell her anyways. "I tried your roommates and they said you were away for the night and it occurred to me that the only place you'd be is Vickie's or there, and I didn't even know your uncle's name much less that he's your uncle on your mom's side and… Robin? I'm really glad you're safe."
Safe?
Nancy sounds a little panicked, a little like she can't catch her breath, and it reminds Robin of teenage Nancy in the upside down that sounded a lot like a scared little girl hiding behind the callous, tough shell of a woman who was forced to grow up too fast.
"Nance, of course I'm okay. You can save this number, though, just in case." Then, after a second. "Are you okay?"
The staticky silence stretches on so long that Robin is almost certain that Nancy has hung up, but a weak little intake of breath tells her that she's still there.
"Three years ago." She says, a bit weakly, and Robin has never wanted to reach through the phone and hug her more. "It was three years ago, Robin, and I still wake up and grab for my gun like something is coming."
Robin can't say she doesn't feel the same way.
She can't even say it's an invalid fear.
"I woke up feeling like something was crawling in my skin." She says instead, twirls the phone cord with her finger absentmindedly. "And sometimes, if I'm by myself… I get the nails on a chalkboard feeling on the back of my neck. Like he's there."
Trauma is a hell of a thing.
Robin wishes none of them ever had to deal with any of it.
Because kids? Sweet, innocent middle schoolers and teenagers just trying to make some extra summer money? Saving the world from otherworldly monsters should have never been on their shoulders.
"I just… knew when I got up this morning." Nancy says, and her voice is a bit smaller than Robin is used to. "If he picked any day to come back, today would be it."
Robin wants to tell her that it's not their burden — not their cross to bear, not anymore — but they all have family they care about back in Hawkins and everyone knows that despite saying they'd never do it again, they'd all go back into the upside down in a heartbeat if it meant saving the people they loved.
"Trauma's a bitch." Robin says, because she can't think of anything else, really. "It was kind of cool, though… saving Hawkins with you guys."
She can practically hear Nancy's smile through the phone.
"It was pretty cool."
Nancy sounds like she's grinning, likely reminiscing on all of the stupid, reckless shit they'd done. It comes back to Robin in a movie montage style moment — bits and pieces of running from the KGB under the Starcourt mall, running from the guards at Pennhurst, staying awake all night waiting on the next attack and then staying up all night again when everything was safe and they could finally breathe again — and she's immensely grateful, in a weird way, that she was bored at Scoops that day and decided to crack Dustin's weird Russian code.
"I'd like to think that trauma aside, we had fun."
They've all been through something unimaginable together — kind of like survivors of tragedy if the survivors kept walking headfirst into the fire determined to put it out themselves — and nothing would ever really be the same and they'd never really relate to anyone else, not fully.
"We did have fun… like a modern day Scooby Doo crew." Nancy says, and Robin wonders if Nance pictures her as Velma or more of a gender bent Shaggy. "Thanks for answering, Rob. No one else really gets it, you know how it is."
Oh, how Robin knows how it is.
Vickie was there and she doesn't really get it — waking up with her heart in her throat, blindly grabbing for the phone and not Dustin's walkie and calling your friends' houses and praying to any higher power, even though she's never really believed in God or anything of the sort, that everyone is okay.
There's a special sort of knowing when it was their whole life.
"Do you think I was more of a Shaggy or a Velma?" Robin says, tries to lighten the mood.
Nancy laughs all light and snickering through the phone, a little staticky because of the distance between them.
"Neither. You're Scooby."
She thinks that Nancy would be a more badass version of Daphne.
"You insult me, Wheeler." Robin says, playing mock hurt over the phone that makes Nancy laugh again.
A well placed joke doesn't heal the trauma or make the night terrors go away, but it lightens the conversation enough that Robin doesn't feel pins and needles running up and down her spine anymore, so it sort of yields the desired effect anyways.
"What? You're totally Scooby — you and Steve are kind of like him and Shaggy — you guys were off doing your own thing for half of the Mindflayer stuff, you always wanted a snack before we did anything, and you run weird."
Robin laughs — an honest to god laugh complete with a snort — and she collapses a little further into the couch. It's a little broken down, the plush thing it is, but her uncle Sean's basement is a welcome escape from the real world so she doesn't look a gift horse in the mouth.
"Snacks are essential! How were we supposed to do any of that on an empty stomach?" She says, and Nancy laughs across the line too. Robin wonders if she's back in Hawkins — she can't be, not alone, because Nancy hates Hawkins more than anyone else — and she finds herself wondering if Nancy ever feels as alone as she does. "Hey Nance?"
There's a beat of silence between them, static in Robin's ear.
"Hm?"
"You can call me any time. You know that, right?" She twirls the phone cord with her finger, tries really hard not to ramble and fuck up what she wants to say. "If you need anything, even if it's the middle of the night, just call. I'll be here… or at my apartment… or you get the picture! But call. Yeah, just call."
Real smooth, Buckley.
Nancy makes this soft sort of sound that's a bit like it comes from the depths of her chest, like there's a bit of shock and emotion and the static of it all, too.
"I will." Nancy says it like a promise, like she means it.
"Good." Robin says back, voice a bit thick like she's going to cry.
There's silence between them again — more static, then a sniffle from Nancy's end, or maybe Robin is crying now too — and she wishes that the state of Massachusetts wasn't so big and Boston was close enough to invite Nancy over for her self indulgent movie marathon.
Nancy had never really liked movies, but she'd like to think Nancy would come anyways.
"Yeah." Nancy says, a bit small like that teenage version of herself that's never really died. "Good."
Robin starts to think that she caused whatever rift is between her and Vickie.
She also starts to think that Vickie never really cared to understand her anyways.
They're at a diner in Northampton after a shitty movie, the sort of place with greasy fries and milkshakes big enough for two, and Robin sort of realizes that Vickie doesn't seem as interested in her as she once was. Her smile doesn't really reach her eyes, not like it did, and she's quieter than usual while Robin chatters about the movie.
They saw Pretty Woman, and Robin thinks it's objectively a good film even if she only went to see it because she thinks Julia Robert's is like, criminally pretty, and she's chattering at Vickie at a mile a minute in the way she only does when she's really comfortable with someone or really nervous and oh, Vickie isn't really responding.
Robin wonders what she did wrong.
She almost asks — what she did wrong, how she can fix it — but she clamps her mouth shut because there's this welling up feeling in her chest of being not enough and too much all at once, and finally Vickie notices.
"You okay, Robs?"
No.
"Oh, yeah. Why wouldn't I be?"
Vickie looks at her a bit like she's studying her — trying to figure her out — and Robin wonders if their relationship has always felt like more of a friends who kiss sort of thing.Maybe it's the Hawkins in Vickie, Robin thinks, that makes her feel like she can't be open about their relationship.
It's not like Northampton is much different, but it's a bigger city where people are more open minded and holding hands wouldn't hurt anything anyways.
"You're being quiet."
Apocalypse indicator number one: Robin Buckley being quiet.
"Oh?" She says, dips a fry in their shared milkshake. It's vanilla, because Vickie doesn't think chocolate goes with dinner food, and the taste sort of reminds Robin of when she would suck down Scoops Ahoy milkshakes with Steve while cramming their lunch in their mouths. "I hadn't noticed."
She has, but she doesn't really want to cause a scene with Vickie, not in public.
"As long as you're okay." Vickie says, and Robin feels a bit bad for wondering if Vickie is pulling away from her. "I just worry about you."
Inter dimensional monsters and all, Robin wants to say, but she sort of just shrugs and swirls her fry in their milkshake in response.
She's lost her appetite anyways.
Later — when they're walking side by side and not hand in hand — Robin gets a random burst of courage and she asks, while wringing her clammy hands and trying to calm her racing heart, what she did wrong to make Vickie pull away.
"It's like… I know I did something and I just want to fix it."
Robin knows she sounds a bit pathetic, and she really can't blame herself for it because Vickie is her first everything — first girlfriend, first kiss, first love — and she realistically knows that like no one actually ends up with their high school sweetheart forever — not unless you're Ted and Karen Wheeler, she guesses — but it still hurts deep in her chest, this sort of sense of not being good enough anymore.
Vickie is silent for a long while, and it sort of confirms everything Robin suspected.
She is the problem.
It's always her.
"It's not anything you've done." Vickie says, a bit cryptically, and Robin wishes more than anything that she could read people better. "It's just… how long are we going to do this?"
This meaning date, Robin thinks.
"Do what, exactly?"
Vickie looks at her like she's a kicked puppy — with those pretty green eyes tinged with something a bit sad — and she grabs Robin's hand and tugs her down onto a bench just a few steps away.
The kicked puppy sad eyes make Robin's heart stutter just a bit, but not the way a normal girlfriend would, and she partly wonders if she'll ever stop seeing that terrified version of teenage Vickie. The one that sat pressed against her side, hands entwined even though no one even knew they were dating, with beasts clawing at the door.
Robin wonders if it's a form of a trauma flashback, the way she sometimes pictures Vickie that way.
She wonders if she'll ever get over it.
"Robin. You know I love you, right?" Vickie starts, and Robin sort of senses a but in there somewhere.
But you're not enough.
But you're too much.
Aren't those sort of the same thing anyways?
"Yeah." She says, finds a particularly interesting string hanging from her flannel to fidget with. "I know."
She's done something wrong, she knows it for certain now, and she pulls on the loose string until it goes and goes and goes and Vickie is holding her hands so gently, not letting her pull it any more than she already has, and Robin wonders if the string is a sort of metaphor for her life. Unwinding and unwinding and unwinding until there's nothing really left but the structure — the bones.
She wonders if Vickie wakes up with nightmares.
She really wishes that Vickie would let her hands go so she can fidget a bit more.
"Robin, sweetheart, look at me." Vickie says, and Robin wants to look anywhere but at her. She fixates her eyes on a shop across the road, all warm lighting in the dark of night, and she wonders why she's never really noticed the shop before. "It's okay, I'm not upset with you."
It's concern in Vickie's eyes, she recognizes it now.
"But I've done something wrong." She says all small, not unlike a child, really. "If you tell me what it is… if- if you just tell me what I've done, I can fix it."
She kind of hates how pathetic she sounds.
She really hates how Vickie is so nice despite it all.
Vickie is all soft eyes and even softer skin, thumbs rubbing soothingly on the backs of Robin's hands like she's something to be treasured, and does Vickie even realize that her hands have killed things? That her hands have held weapons and fired them?
Does Vickie even realize how much loss she's experienced?
She doesn't want to lose Vickie too.
"What if there's nothing to fix?" Vickie says after a long moment of consideration, and Robin can tell she's doing that thing where she sort of chews on her words before she says them. "What if it's just… life things?"
Life things, Robin echoes in her brain.
It sounds a lot like something she's done wrong, though.
"But I could be better." She says, almost pleadingly. It's a please don't leave me and an I miss you all the time and a trauma is a bitch but I'm here — we're here — and we need to be okay. "I just want to know what I did wrong."
Robin isn't really that good at reading people — she never has been — but she can certainly read the conflicted look in Vickie's eyes, gaze downcast on their joined hands. Her dainty, thin fingers play with the multitude of rings on Robin's fingers, spinning them around and clacking them together while she thinks.
There's hurt there in Vickie's eyes.
"Do you remember what we talked about when we were planning out our lives?" An unrelated statement, like she's trying to steer the conversation in a different direction. "Do you remember what the plan was?"
It was discussed way back before Robin ever left Hawkins — slightly after the hospital and the demo-dogs and Vickie finding out about everything — and they've sort of avoided the topic ever since.
Vickie was going to finish school and work at the hospital, Robin was going to go to her fancy linguistics lectures and intern at the radio station. It was one of the things she liked most about Hawkins — her job at WSQK — and it was sort of like a tie back to everything without reliving it every day in the town where everything went so horribly wrong.
"Yeah, I guess?" Robin says it like she doesn't really know, but she remembers it all quite clearly. "I… yeah?"
Vickie had no intention of moving out of Hawkins — wants to remain close to her parents and her friends and the hospital where there's actual job security and not just playing music on the radio — and Robin…
Robin doesn't think she can ever go back — not for long, anyways.
"Why won't you come back to Hawkins?"
Vickie's voice is soft, tender, and it almost fucking destroys Robin. She sort of wishes that Vickie was the type to yell — the type to stand up and give her a verbal lashing and then turn and walk away forever — because it would almost be easier than this.
Easier than being known so well that someone is so gentle with her, despite it all.
She doesn't really think it's the sort of thing she can explain to Vickie, anyways, the way she feels about Hawkins. It's wrapped in so much trauma and grief and sadness and everyone else — all of the people they saved time and time again — they get up every day and it's a normal Tuesday.
And they go to the grocery store, the one that her friends bandaged El's leg in after the Mindflayer attacked her.
And they go to the mall, the same one her and Steve and Dustin cracked the Russian code in. The same mall where they were captured and drugged by the KGB, the first time Robin thought she was going to die.
And they go to football games at the high school, the same high school where everything went down time and time again.
And they go to the pool in the summer, where everything happened with Billy.
And it's all just normal for them — a small town that had a few large scale controversies but is still safe despite that — but Robin can't walk through that town without feeling like she's going to throw up. She can't sit at Enzo's without thinking of the friends she lost along the way — the people who are left parentless, too — and trauma is a hell of a thing but it's also crippling.
She kind of feels like she's going to throw up.
"I mean, life is busy. You know I work nights and by the time I'm up and running for the day and get down to Hawkins, you're exhausted." It's not the reason but it's a reason. Robin knows it's not what Vickie wants to hear. "And then I have those lectures at Smiths."
Excuses, excuses.
Vickie's eyes go all sad, like she's disappointed in her. She recognizes the look because it was in her own mother's eyes when she started staying out all night and missing work — if only her mother had known, if only there had been a way to explain.
"You know that's not what I mean, Robs."
Isn't it, though?
She wants to know why she's not enough for Robin, really, why she's not important enough to put the trauma aside and just move home as though it were ever that simple.
"Then what do you mean?"
Robin hates how her voice kind of rises in challenge, like she's daring Vickie to say the quiet part out loud. It's an elephant in the room, an ugly thing, a twisting sort of anguish that turns the person you love the most into an unsympathetic, cold ghost of what they were.
Most of all, Robin hates how she feels herself starting to resent Vickie for expecting her to just move past it.
"You know what I mean, Robin." Vickie says, and her skin is so soft and hot on Robin's skin that she thinks it may burn her. "Why won't you come home? For me?"
Home.
Robin isn't quite sure where home is anymore, but she's certain that it's not Hawkins. It's not really Northampton either, she thinks, and maybe home is an abstract sort of thing you long for all your life.
"Do you even know how hard it was?" Is all she can say, weak and pathetic and sort of thick with tears that hurt her throat but won't fall yet.
Robin is a little too stubborn to cry in public.
"Going back for the kids' graduation?"
No.
Well yes, but also no.
Does Vickie know how hard it was to live there — to stay there — after everything happened? Hell, they all got out as soon as they were able to — none of them could really look at the town the same, anyways. It was tainted with images of friends and classmates dying, more friends hurt and battered and bruised, blood and death and tragedy.
The whole place needs to be blown off the map, Robin thinks.
"No." She says instead. "Living there. Going through it. Just… seeing it all. Being scared for my life and like, for the lives of everyone else I ever cared about?"
There's a long silence between them — not one that's exactly comfortable, either — and Vickie traces the lines on Robin's hand a little reverently, almost as though she's trying to commit them to memory. The scars, the lines, the little freckles that pop up in the summer and fade in the winter.
"So you wouldn't come back to Hawkins?" Vickie says, and Robin hears the for me that lingers beneath it all. "You couldn't do it?"
Robin thinks long and hard, tries to keep the tears from falling down her face. She fails miserably, of course, but she tries to at least hide the sounds of her crying in a low chuckle.
"No, Vic." She says, a little sniffle slipping out. She hopes that it's late enough in the evening that no one passing by can see her crying and if they do, maybe they don't really care anyways. "I can't."
They can make new plans, Robin tells herself, because she really does love Vickie and want forever with her — so long as the forever isn't in Hawkins — and she wonders if Vickie will ever leave for her.
Because after all she's been through, why should Robin be the one forced to move?
"Okay then." Vickie says.
There's a strange sort of finality to the statement that makes Robin's stomach churn.
"Okay then."
They don't break up immediately.
It comes in stages, Robin thinks, sort of like grief.
It starts with their talk on the bench. Vickie goes home shortly after — home, to Hawkins, because Vickie's home has never really been Robin — and she's left to walk with her hands stuffed in her pockets around her neighborhood to clear her head.
It progresses into holidays spent apart — first thanksgiving, then Christmas — and Robin wonders where she went wrong. She's truly alone for the first time in her adult life, and she spitefully doesn't return to Hawkins for either holiday because she doesn't need Hawkins.
She doesn't need anyone in Hawkins, either.
Except for Steve.
She kind of needs Steve.
And then, after Robin spends her Christmas at the radio station spinning hit after hit into early in the morning, she drags herself into her apartment and finds a blinking red light on the answering machine and she just knows. She supposes she's sort of known all along, really, that things with Vickie would have an expiration date of sorts — not when Vickie wants her to move back to Hawkins and Robin refuses to compromise and do it.
Hey, Robin. Merry Christmas, Vickie's soft voice comes through the tinny sounding speaker of the answering machine, almost like she's trying to stay quiet, I hope you had a good one. I tried to listen to your show, you know? I really did. But the signal in Hawk- in town… it's pretty spotty. Anyways, I'm gonna be in your area the day after tomorrow if you have time to meet up, get coffee, that sort of thing. Just let me know, okay? I… Bye, Robs.
Robin decides to just deal with it when she wakes up.
It's not that she doesn't want to talk to Vickie because she does — oh god, does she ever — it's just that she's never quite been good at hiding her emotions and she's tired and she just wants to collapse into a black, dreamless world for a while.
It's a two sleeping pill sort of morning, she thinks.
When she wakes in the early afternoon, all of her roommates are gone off to their respective holiday gatherings of sorts — she's been invited to a few, and she does like her new friends and all, but Robin hates feeling out of place more than anything — and she decides that calling Vickie can wait until she makes a cup of coffee.
Coffee is essential.
When she's put it off as long as possible, Robin dials Vickie's number and hopes — oh god, she hopes with every staticky ring — that she isn't home, but god and luck have never really been on her side anyways, and Vickie answers right before it goes to the answering machine.
Shit luck, Buckley. Don't play the lottery today.
"Robin, hi." Vickie says, and she sounds all soft and fond. "I was hoping you'd call."
They're still technically girlfriends, but it feels a lot like a strained one sided friendship as of late.
Robin thinks that if the ground would open up and swallow her whole, that would be pretty cool right about now.
"Sorry it's a little later than usual." She says, because she does hate the idea of Vickie waiting around all day hoping for the phone to ring. "I didn't want to call too early on your day off, you know? Waited until after I'd slept."
It's sort of a white lie, but Robin doesn't really think that matters in the grand scheme of things.
"That's alright." Vickie says, polite as ever. Robin sort of wishes she would yell at her or scream or something. "I don't know if you heard my message — well, of course you listened to it — but I'm going to be in your area tomorrow."
She wants to break it off in person, Robin knows it for sure, because Vickie is the sort of person who'd want to get together in person to make sure she's okay.
Maybe she just wants her band hoodie back.
Either way, Robin is silent for a long while as she contemplates what to say. She doesn't really want to be broken up with in public — especially not at a quiet little coffee shop — but she's also terrified to say something first because what if?
What if Vickie is calling to tell her that she's reconsidered, that she'll move out of Hawkins for her?
It's wishful thinking at best and delusional optimism at its worst, really.
"I'll have to check my schedule." She says coolly, tries to be the picture of nonchalant but actually, Robin is feeling very chalant. "I'm not sure if I have to go in early tomorrow."
She doesn't, but she's sure she can if she has to.
"Okay." Vickie says, and her voice goes a little soft through the static tin can sound of the phone. "Just let me know if you have time tomorrow, okay? Before I leave out in the morning."
There's a bit of fondness that tugs at Robin's heart when Vickie's tone takes on something that's a mix between teasing and just knowing — the sort of thing you do when you really know someone, like almost better than you know yourself — and oh, this is really going to hurt, isn't it?
Her first kiss, her first love, her first everything.
Her Vickie.
It makes Robin wonder if she owes it to Vickie to meet up tomorrow — to allow her the closure she also needs, because Robin isn't the only important person here — and she lets out a little sigh and decides that yeah, she can do it for Vickie.
"Can you do breakfast? Like… right after I get off work?"
It's a big ask and Robin knows it — she's off just before five in the morning, when most sane people are asleep or just getting up for work — and the drive from Hawkins is pretty long for that hour of night so it's a bit of a dick move, really, but Robin doesn't think she can handle being broken up with in the middle of the day in some public space.
"Is anything even open that early?"
"Yeah, a little diner near the station. My coworkers and I are like the only people that are ever there that late, but they have to be in to prep the pies for the day anyways so…" She's rambling and she knows it, nervously twisting the phone cord around her finger. "Anyways, it's pretty good food. I know it's late, though, so if you can't make it…"
She trails off, sort of like an implication.
If it's too late, you can tell me what you need to say right now.
"No, no, I'll make it work." Vickie says, and Robin feels a bit bad for asking her to meet at five in the morning three hours from home. "Don't worry about it. How about… I meet you at the station and I can drive to the diner?"
Nothing sounds worse, actually.
"Sure! I usually take the train or walk, I don't really mind if you'd rather just meet at the diner."
Please God, don't pick me up, Robin is basically pleading with the universe, begging not to be put in another awkward situation. But luck has decided that it really isn't on her side today — not by a long shot — and Vickie makes this sort of sound that tells Robin she's about to be trapped in a car driving to a diner where she will inevitably be broken up with and then be forced to get back into that car — Vickie is too nice to make her walk, even if she want to — and be driven home.
Wonderful.
"I don't mind!" Vickie says, and she sounds so cheerful that it makes Robin a bit sick. It occurs to her that Vickie is probably only picking her up at work so she can't run and avoid the situation. "The idea of you walking alone when I have a perfectly good car doesn't sit right with me, anyways."
Perfectly good car is subjective, Robin thinks, because Vickie's little Sunbird is holding on by a wing and a prayer.
"Okay." She says, despite wanting to scream and cry and run away. "That works."
There's no use in running from it, really, so she has to face it head on like… like a demogorgon or Vecna. Actually, she thinks that the monsters might actually be easier to deal with.
"Thank you, Robs." Vickie says, her tone going a little quiet. "Don't forget, okay?"
How could she?
Robin almost calls Steve.
She doesn't, half because she's certain he'll make fun of her and half because she's pretty sure he's coaching a ball game, but she does wonder what sort of outfit one should wear to get broken up with.
It's not like she's ever been broken up with before.
She decides to call Nancy in a moment of weakness — about an hour before she needs to leave for work, and she's pretty sure Nancy is too busy to answer the phone anyways — and she twirls the cord with her fingers and paces back and forth and back and forth until the line connects and oh, Nancy's soft voice answers the phone.
"Nancy Wheeler for the Boston Herald."
It's polite and clipped and formal but it's a relief to hear her voice.
Robin is so glad that Nancy answered.
"Nancy, hey, it's Robin. Uh, Robin Buckley?"
The melodic little laugh that comes through the phone, a little distorted and tinny, is the best sound Robin has heard all day.
"Do you think I'd just forget about you, Robin Buckley?"
It makes Robin laugh too, because she's always been a bit ridiculous when she's nervous.
She doesn't really know what to say — because how do you tell Nancy fucking Wheeler that your girlfriend is breaking up with you because you're too traumatized to move back to your hometown and be with her and you don't know what to wear to the inevitable breakup — so Robin makes a vague sort of sound and waits for Nancy to ask her why she called.
Oh god, please don't hang up, Nance.
"Not that I don't love a call from Rockin' Robin herself, but don't you have to be at the station soon?"
It sort of strikes Robin as strange, the fact that Nancy knows her schedule, though she chalks it up to Nancy's reporter mind and the way she just naturally remembers things.
She's always been so observant.
"Oh, yeah. I'm just… Vickie is going to break up with me. In the morning." Robin is nervous, rambling a little extra. "Like, she didn't say that she's breaking up with me but like… I won't move back to Hawkins for her — because I don't know, Nance, it's just too much — and anyways, she's coming to take me to breakfast in the morning and I just… I know."
Nancy makes an upset sort of sound, a little gasp of sorts.
"That's bullshit." She says, and it makes Robin laugh a bit. "I'm sorry, Rob, I know you love her but that's just… bullshit."
Bullshit has been Nancy's favorite word since high school, Robin thinks.
It sort of suits her.
"Yeah, total bullshit." Robin says, and she sort of feels normal again — not the scared teenager, not the traumatized young adult, just Robin. "And like… yeah I'm sad but mostly I… don't know what to wear to a breakup?"
Nancy laughs — an honest to god laugh complete with one of those little snorts she tries to hide — and Robin laughs along with her, laughs until her stomach hurts and she's sort of leaning on the wall for support.
"I'm sorry, what?" Nancy says, and she sounds like the stress has rolled off of her and she's just… Nance. "You think you're being broken up with and you're worried about what to wear?"
"I know I'm being broken up with, there's a difference. And wouldn't you be worried too? Like, if I can't control the fact that Vickie is breaking up with me I can at least control how I look?"
Nancy is silent for a minute, then that minute stretches to a long while.
And then she hears it, Nancy moving about the room and breathing softly into the phone. Robin thinks she should call Nancy more — she's certainly better conversation than Steve, who natters about women at a mile a minute and gives her detailed rundowns of his sex life — and she mostly thinks that Nancy is really the only person she knows who gets it, the not wanting to go back to Hawkins of it all.
"I think… your leather jacket because it's supposed to get cold tonight. With one of your band tees, one of the faded ones that screams I have better taste in music than any of you losers." Nancy moves around a bit on the other side of the phone. "But don't wear the chucks that have Robin hearts Vickie all over them. She'd notice."
Robin takes mental notes, already knows that she needs to look like the picture of nonchalant.
Like she doesn't care.
"Okay, got it. Band tee, jeans, leather jacket. And not the yearning chucks."
Nancy sort of laughs at that, and Robin wishes more than anything that she had more time to sit and talk — about Hawkins, about Vickie, about the monster-shaped elephant in the room.
"Robin?"
"That's me… Rockin' Robin, at your service."
She's deflecting with her weird brand of humor and she knows it — is self aware enough to recognize it in herself — but it draws a little giggle out of Nancy that lightens the mood a little bit.
"Why don't we get together this weekend? We can invite the boys, watch a few shitty movies, talk about it."
It meaning whatever happens with Vickie in the morning.
"Yeah." She says, and a smile tugs at the corner of her lips. Everything will be okay, she thinks, despite how hard it feels right now. "Yeah, I'd really like that. I'm—"
Nancy cuts her off before she can even speak.
"Off on Saturday nights." She finishes Robin's sentence, and Robin finds herself wondering how Nancy just knows. "I know. We can do something then… on Saturday. Not too early in the day, though, don't worry about that."
Robin thinks it's quite nice to be considered for once.
Nancy is one of the best friends she's ever had.
"We can do my weird uncle's basement again?"
There's a silent not my apartment in her words, one that she hopes Nancy picks up on, because she absolutely loves Steve and Jonathan but they're loud and obnoxious and smell like man and she doesn't want that in her bedroom.
"Yeah, of course." She can hear the smile in Nancy's voice. "I'll tell the boys."
The boys, like they're twelve or something.
Robin supposes that her and Nancy will always see them like that — as teenage idiots who pranced about town with a walkie and a compass trying to ward off whatever certain evil was thrown at them that week.
"Shit." Robin glances at the clock, realizes she has to hurry if she wants to make it to the station in time to get a coffee and queue up her records. "I gotta go, Nance. Thanks for all the help. Really."
She hopes Nancy knows how much she appreciates her, not just for the advice but for everything.
For being a friend in some of the hardest seasons of her life.
"You can call me anytime." Nancy says instead of a you're welcome, almost like she doesn't think she was much help at all. "Good luck tonight, Rockin' Robin."
It makes her wonder if the station even picks up in Boston.
If it does, does Nancy listen to her embarrass herself on the radio?
"Okay, I really gotta go or I'll be super late. But I'll see you Saturday afternoon, yeah?"
She can practically hear the little breath of laughter Nancy lets out, like she's truly amused. Or maybe she's just excited for the group to get together again — Robin is, absolutely.
"Go on, I'm not keeping you." Nancy says, and then a little quieter. "I'll be listening for you."
The line clicks after that and Robin wonders what the fuck it means, because Nancy Wheeler always speaks in some sort of riddle — that prophetic, cryptic writer speak and all.
Robin thinks about it the entire time she gets dressed — her jeans, the ones that are broken in and super soft and a bit frayed from dragging the ground, and her Cheap Trick shirt because it's her favorite — and she thinks about it while she laces up her shoes, too.
Her high top red converse.
The ones that don't have Robin hearts Vickie on them. These are full of song lyrics and doodled flowers and demogorgon faces too, and she wonders if Nancy would think it's an accurate doodle of a demo.
Steve would make fun of it for sure.
When she shrugs her leather jacket on and runs down the stairs to catch her bus, Nancy's words sort of echo in her mind.
I'll be listening for you.
Maybe they've evolved into some sort of elite best friendship, Robin thinks, the kind that doesn't discuss things at a bimonthly get together or a weekly phone call. Maybe they're the sort of best friends who call every few days and debrief situations like these — like breakups.
Robin has never really had a friend like that before.
She decides she'll call Nancy first thing in the morning, then, because what else could Nancy have meant?
Robin doesn't mean to spin sappy songs all night, it just sort of happens.
She can tell that Jesse is concerned from where he's sitting shelving records and running the soundboard, but he doesn't say anything — not outwardly, of course, but his eyes are doing all the talking in some language that Robin doesn't really understand.
And Robin understands a lot of languages.
The song she was playing fades out — I Think We're Alone Now, a classic by Tiffany — and Robin slips the headphones back on her head and rolls her chair a bit closer to the microphone and she's back.
It's showtime.
"For all you late night yearners like me, that was Tiffany's I Think We're Alone Now, because don't we all want to be alone with the person we love?"
She sets the next record on the turntable while she speaks, a sort of practiced perfection in her motions that only comes from years of work. She queues the needle us to the right grooves on the record — she knows all of them well, even the ones she doesn't play often — and she drops it in the staticky space between songs.
She's got thirty seconds, give or take.
"And Northampton, this next one's for all the girls and guys who are going through it right now."
Robin didn't really plan what she wanted to play before she came in today, and she wonders if anyone is even listening at this hour. It's a little after three and most of the city is asleep, she thinks, or at least it feels that way from the station.
"Because it's always hard to say I'm sorry, isn't it? Even when you don't really know what you're sorry for." Robin realizes that her coworkers — mostly nosy ass Jesse who can't stay out of her business — are looking at her with these big, sad eyes. Like they feel bad for her. "So this one's for you, all of the gals and guys who don't know how to say sorry, The Cure's Boy's Don't Cry."
The song starts and Robin shoves her headphones off, pulls them off her neck and sets them on the desk and fuck, she feels tears pricking at the corners of her eyes that she can't quite control.
She busies herself with queuing up a few songs to keep her emotions at bay.
I Wanna Dance With Somebody.
Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go.
Africa too, because why the hell not?
She sets the needles above each of the songs she wants, and the tears start to flow down her face in earnest now — and god, she can't fucking sit there and let Jesse watch her cry like an idiot — so she pushes up off her rolling chair and makes a beeline for the bathroom.
Someone can cover for her, she won't be long.
"I need fifteen." She says a little gruffly, her voice thick with tears. "I've got three queued up, but play whatever the hell you want until I'm back. I don't give a shit."
It isn't like her to not care about what gets played during her show, but desperate times call for desperate measures and right now? Robin needs to exercise some of those desperate measures.
It's not like anyone is even listening.
She sort of hopes that Vickie is, though.
"Robin?" She hears one of the girls call after her, Melissa who hosts the morning show every other day. "Are you okay? Can I get you anything?"
Leave me alone, she wants to yell, but she just sort of waves her hand to dismiss her instead.
"I just need some air." She says, and it's not really a lie. "I'll be back in a minute. I just hurt my feelings with music again, you know how I am."
It wouldn't be the first time.
She steps out into the cold air and wraps her flannel around her body a little tighter. It's freezing — the sort of cold that makes your eyes water and lungs ache — and she fumbles in the deep front pocket of her shirt for her cigarettes and lighter.
It's a nasty habit, but Robin needs the stress relief.
She looks for Vickie's red Sunbird more out of self preservation than wanting to see her, and she lights her cigarette and holds it between two fingers.
She wonders if Vickie is listening right now — not that it'd do her any good, Jesse's taste in music is absolute shit and that's why he runs the soundboard instead of hosting.
She wonders if Vickie will see her, look into her eyes, and decide that Hawkins isn't all that important.
Robin puffs on her cigarette until it's down to the filter and then she flicks it to the ground. It's so cold and damp that the embers go from orange to gray as soon as it hits the concrete, but Robin stomps on it for good measure — just in case — and she checks her watch to find that oh, it's five minutes until her show ends and she needs to get back inside.
She always signs off, even if no one is listening.
There isn't a single car on the busy road — not even Vickie's yet.
The warmth hits her as soon as she walks back in the station and it makes her cheeks go pink and her eyes dry up just a bit, thank god, and then she's back in the sound booth and rolling her eyes at the song Jesse has spinning.
Don't Stop Believing.
Robin has always hated Journey.
She clears the records in the queue and gets her last few songs ready — a classic rotation of some Madonna, Bowie, and Queen — and she rolls her chair over to the desk to slip her headphones on and yeah, Rockin' Robin is back.
"I hope you enjoyed the lineup I had for you tonight… a real mixed bag, wasn't it?"
Jesse snickers from across the room, and he hides behind a record he's shelving when she flips him off.
"And you know I sure did enjoy hanging out with all you night owls tonight, but Miss. Melissa in the Mornings is waiting oh so eagerly to take the booth."
Robin talks while she sets the needles over her last few songs — Space Oddity, Under Pressure, and Like A Prayer — and then she's scooting herself back across the desk, closer to her microphone, and she speaks to nobody in particular in the same sort of way she does every night.
"So you know what that means, don't you? It's time for Rockin' Robin to say good morning to you and good night to me, Northampton, and I'm gonna leave you with some Bowie and Queen."
She turns the microphone off, hangs her headphones on the stand, and she walks directly out of the building into the cool night air.