Chapter Text
“What are you doing here?”
The voice of Nancy Wheeler is the first thing that greets Robin as she steps into the fenced area of the neighborhood basketball court-turned-skate park.
Robin finds herself wondering the same thing as she turns to face the source of her criticism. She knows she's here for a reason. A reunion, so she's been told. Really, this is just Steve and his kid friends begging to be kicked out of the neighborhood’s public tennis court. But who is she to judge?
Nancy does not share the same perspective on keeping her judgments to herself. Clearly.
Robin becomes aware of this as she meets an incredulous pair of gray eyes. Eyes that Robin has been on the receiving end of before. Only a handful of times, but still one too many.
“So lovely to see you too,” Robin says with a tight-lipped smile.
Nancy glares.
Robin rolls her eyes, finally gives up, and takes a few steps forward with a tight caution in her posture. She stiffly lowers herself onto the bench. There’s a respectful few inches of distance from Nancy, even more so from the ridiculously ugly purse that resides at Nancy’s side. It’s dark leather, all straps and pockets, pale scratches of nails and harsh corners. The sheer scale of it makes Nancy look small.
“You got a body in there, Wheeler?” Robin speaks without thinking, nodding at the bag.
It seems to catch Nancy off guard, if only for a moment. “Excuse me?” she questions, exasperated as ever.
“You started it,” Robin shrugs.
A moment of silence passes before Nancy amends her statement. “I didn’t think this was your kind of scene,” she says, gesturing vaguely across the flat to where Max is already trying to teach Steve to stand on a skateboard.
Not her scene. Robin almost takes that as a compliment because– who the hell picks a cleared out tennis court with a gaggle of teenagers occupying it as their scene?
“I mean, I didn’t want to be here.” Robin crosses her arms over her stomach and leans back with some finality. “If that makes you feel better.”
“No, not really,” Nancy sighs, rubbing the bridge of her nose.
Conversation, as limited as it has been, comes to a stop again. Robin notices, idly, that Nancy is wearing too much clothing. It’s still seventy out, and the sun has only started to set, but the image of Nancy that lives in Robin’s brain would jump at the opportunity to whore it up over a glorified playdate. Not that Robin has thought about that.
Well, it’s not like it’s sweltering, Robin circles back . It’s a simmer at best. Robin drops the subject from her tangled mess of brainwaves. She doesn’t know why she’s being such a bitch.
“So, you and Jonathan?” Robin asks, turning finally to face Nancy. She tries to repress a grin and only ends up showing more of a sharp canine, biting into her cheek to bring her expression back to her standard amused smirk.
In perfect harmony, as all should be, when the scales have finally balanced, Nancy releases the most exasperated, dramatic groan she can muster.
“What’s a little girl talk between friends?” Robin pokes again. Her eyebrows quirk dubiously. It is not at all conducive to hiding a single mischievous thought occurring in her head.
“I don’t know you,” Nancy huffs out, sitting up – sizing her up, actually – in a way that makes Robin stifle a nervous laugh.
When Robin realizes that Nancy’s trying to find an exit, she decides to finally relent. She drops one arm over the back of the bench, crossing her legs. “Fine. Be that way. See if I care.” She does care a little bit.
Robin watches as Nancy stares at her, then turns away. She digs through her purse, pulls out her iPod mini, and Robin can see it on her face when Nancy decides that she no longer wants to talk.
For perhaps the first time in her life, Robin takes the hint. She’s done all the annoying that can be done, and so she backs off, clambers around and makes the most unnecessary show of removing herself from the bench.
From there, she trots off to bother Steve and Max, shooting a wink over one shoulder to a brooding Nancy.
-
Robin gets around to reflecting on her behavior much later in the day. Mostly on her brief but exciting encounter with Nancy in her natural habitat.
It’s taken the sun going down to get Robin into any mood for reflection. On any other day, it might take a beer, too, but they’d elected to keep alcohol out of the picture considering Max’s presence. Robin is alright with that.
She’s on her own, though. A few hours go by, the dust settles, and everyone else is happy in their smaller sectioned groups. Everyone but Nancy, who hasn’t moved from her post on the edge of the court except to slip herself into a coat three sizes too large. Like, severely too large. It might grow teeth and eat her up, if that neverending, black hole, mouth-monster of a purse doesn’t do it first.
Robin can’t help but feel like she’s been kind of an asshole.
Luckily for her, no one had pointed out the animosity since her arrival. From a distance, their exchange had been… just about civil. Not that anyone should have reason to worry about a fight breaking out. Robin was not the fighting type.
It’s dark, now. Cold. Robin stands on the perimeter of the group, keeping vigilance for… something, she’s not really sure. She sinks back into the old flattened sherpa of her jacket, hands in her pockets. She wants to smoke.
All that being established, the distance between herself and the rest of the group gives Robin ample opportunity to watch Nancy. Much like one might observe some abnormal cells under a lens, Robin keeps her eye on Nancy, intent as she picks through that pink iPod of hers. An iPod that has likely endured a lifetime of suffering, stuffed to the absolute brim with music that would make Robin’s brain turn static on contact, send her into the complete haze that she spends most days in while she works long shifts behind counters.
God, even the thought of stuck-up mainstream music is making Robin feel distraught. She’s not a snob, not really, but she is tense. Like, second-hand tense. She finds it upsetting to imagine how hard life must be for Nancy, especially with the absolute magnitude of the stick that seems permanently lodged up her ass.
The thought makes Robin giggle under her breath, retreating further into the warm fur collar of her jacket. She doesn’t care what she looks like to anyone observing, because in all actuality, who the hell cares enough to keep an eye on her?
That’s the thought that finally stifles Robin’s creative string of pointed judgments. She huffs another chuckle when she realizes how stupid she might look from a distance, staring at the ground.
“Something funny?” Robin hears, snapping her out of her contented fit of laughter and judgmental musings that only get funnier.
Someone cared enough, apparently. Robin had sorely underestimated her company.
She looks up, and there’s Nancy, having made a very impressive traversal of the twenty feet, give or take, that had previously set them apart. Curse you, Wheeler, you and your endlessly long legs, your ever-furious power walk.
Robin laughs again at the mental image of Nancy strutting up on her, something she’s so upset to have missed the visual of. She bites her tongue quickly when she remembers that she’s been asked a question.
“It’s nothing.” Robin unfurls herself a bit, turning her head to watch as Nancy stands next to her, significantly closer this time around. Robin brushes over it. She’s the one being approached. Her right to be annoying is sound in its roots.
So, she does what she has dedicated nearly all of her life to the study of. She acts like the little shit that she’s destined to be.
“It must be hard not being able to laugh, though.” Robin leans against the chain link fence and it digs into her back. “I haven’t heard you laugh before.”
“Well, I still haven’t heard you say anything funny.”
Robin snorts, then bites the inside of her cheek. She looks over to see Nancy holding back something that looks almost like amusement.
“Listen, as much as I’d like to keep playing the whole bitter thing,” Nancy pauses. She adjusts herself, undoubtedly trying to get away from the metal pole that looks fit to dig into her shoulder. “I’m dying for a Bud Light and some Twizzlers so… come with me to the 7/11?”
There is some deliberation, but Nancy and her pout are relentless. This is how Robin finds herself being dragged by the arm of her jacket to Nancy’s car, parked a few spaces away from Steve’s. She meets an anxious Harrington stare on her way out, responding with a fake reassuring grin and one single unoccupied jazz hand.
Nancy doesn’t open the door for her, hoping that Robin will just get the memo and cooperate for once in her life. She does.
Nancy starts the car. Robin takes in her surroundings as the engine grumbles to life around her. The AC starts, spitting dust and the smell of cheap air freshener towards her, the obnoxious generic smell of what Robin can only assume is titled Fresh Linen or Ocean Breeze. Overwhelmingly, she just smells Nancy’s perfume, and she welcomes that scent with open arms.
As everything starts up, the small radio screen flashes to life. It seems that Nancy had shut everything off mid-tape, because when the audio comes across the speakers, she hears a near-deafening hard rock track. Robin would cringe at the sound, if not for all the conditioning she has faced, having dealt with Eddie’s influences on Steve’s radio for so long. They’re both too stunned to speak for a minute, but Nancy is the first to reach for the volume.
Robin stops her with a hand on her wrist, and for the first time, she realizes that she might be wrong about this girl. She holds back an astonished laugh and focuses instead on delivering her line.
“Nancy Wheeler,” Robin starts, her voice raised above the music, an edge of teasing in her tone. She moves Nancy’s hand away and releases it, swatting her away from the console. After a beat, she turns to glance at the small screen and put the volume down just a few notches, assuring that she’s being heard. “You listen to a lot of Christian rock in your Honda Civic?”
Nancy looks frozen for a moment, turning to meet her eye. She opens her mouth to speak, closing it once, rearranging the words before she puts them forth. “For the record, I did not know this was a Christian band.”
Robin feigns a gasp, bringing one hand to clutch at her chest. “And she didn’t even do her homework!” She falls back in the seat, tossing her head to the side and making an expression of sheer anguish.
“Lord,” Nancy huffs, staring daggers at Robin’s one-woman show for only a moment longer. She’s bored, so she sets her mind back to the Twizzlers that she’s set to devour.
Robin just laughs more as they pull out of the parking lot. The song changes to something more her style, less nerve-frying but still not generic. Robin can actually say she’s heard this song before, which is a feat in comparison to the last twenty seconds of guitar that just about burnt her to a crisp.
“Try not to crash and kill us both. I really wouldn’t like to die with my last thoughts being of the absolute cheapest beer and fucking…” she pauses, waiting for the tiny screen to show the artist’s name, “Flyleaf.” Robin laughs at herself, rubbing her hand over her tired eyes. “You’re just full of surprises.”
Nancy sits in silence for the rest of the ride, and Robin can tell she’s biting back a finite but still large number of comebacks to all of the accusations she’s facing. Robin commends her. Nancy is a better woman than her.
They step out a few minutes later, the blinding laminate floors are squeaking under Robin’s converse as she steps up to the counter. Nancy is off on her prowl for the beer fridge, so Robin takes the time to buy a pack of Newports with a fiver that she’d found after digging through her pocket. She isn’t asked for an ID, just as she knows Nancy won’t be when she hauls the case of beer half her size up to the counter.
The lights overhead are buzzing. Robin can hear the whirring of the Slurpee machine off to the side, smell the thick and sweet dried syrups on every surface, and just as soon as Robin had arrived, she’d gone again.
She leans up against the hood of Nancy’s Honda, shaky hands repeating the familiar process of flipping the pack open, fighting with her Bic lighter, and finally taking a long drag when it catches. She allows herself to relax on the exhale, leaning into the familiar sensation of infinite freefalling that draws her focus when the nicotine finally settles.
She repeats this process a moment longer, flicks ashes away from her coat, and takes another pull. Rinse repeat. That’s until the bell over the door rings, and Robin looks up to meet Nancy, who is struggling to balance a 12 pack of beers, a package of Twizzlers, and a sleeve of Starbursts. She balances it all awkwardly on one knee as she passes Robin on the passenger’s side, gesturing with her full body toward the back door.
Robin raises a brow, holds her cigarette in the corner of her lips, and opens the door for Nancy with much delay. She revels in the glare that comes her way after Nancy has set everything down, taking the door and slamming it shut.
“You really shouldn’t keep smoking those,” Nancy supplies, coming to lean on Robin’s right side.
“Someone tell me where I’ve heard that one before,” Robin says, forcing a furrow into her brow as she takes another drag, holds her breath in contemplative silence, then exhales slowly in Nancy’s general direction.
“Gross,” Nancy whispers.
Robin doesn’t fail to notice the way she squirms, the anxious tucking of her hands into loose jean pockets.
“Not into the whole bad boy thing?” Robin teases. She knows Nancy is staring at her rings, at her chipped black polish, at her dark eyes. Nancy stares a lot. Robin feels like prey under that watchful look she wears, like she’s just waiting to be jumped and torn to bits of stuffing and thread. “If not for discovering your whole Emo side, I’d think I wasted my time by supplying my company, Miss Wheeler.”
“Oh, God forbid,” Nancy sighs out, prying her eyes away from Robin and gulping uncomfortably. “It’s not like it’s some well-guarded secret. Maybe you just need to think about your biases and snap-judgments, Rob.”
“Woah, now. Not that deep.” Robin smiles almost awkwardly, stepping away from the car as her cigarette nears the end of its lifespan. She walks toward the trash can as she talks, “I’m quite endeared, actually,” she says, stubbing the flame and tossing the filter as she turns back around on her heel.
“Well, lucky me,” Nancy says with too much confidence, which has Robin squinting at her.
“You takin’ me home or not?”
“Just get in.”
-
The clock has passed ten when Nancy pipes up, “I’m glad you ditched with me.”
Robin hums. They’re sitting on the floor of Nancy’s studio apartment. Robin has her back pressed to a leg of Nancy’s bed, while the girl in question is flat on the floor. Her iPod is hooked up to a small speaker through the headphone jack, playing more songs that Robin hasn’t heard, hasn’t ever expected to hear from Nancy’s personal library.
Robin has already taken in her surroundings, band posters juxtaposed with fairy lights and tapestries. Some part of Robin expected a tight minimalist kind of environment only to once again prove herself wrong. The clutter is charming, at the very least.
They’re a few beers in, the two of them. Unbelievably, Robin feels farther gone than Nancy looks, which means that it’s time for Robin to man the fuck up, steel herself, and not lose a single unspoken competition to Nancy.
“So,” Robin begins, twirling a piece of hair around a ringed finger. “You never told me. Jonathan?” she asks genuinely this time, and it seems like Nancy can tell the difference from her usual pestering.
“We’re not dating,” Nancy says, and it’s probably the most candid and plain statement that Robin has heard from her tonight. “He’s a great guy – a great friend. And we work well together, but really, that’s what it is. Work.”
Robin nods, willing to listen along. She stares at the line of Nancy’s jaw as she talks, and watches as she takes apart a strawberry Twizzler, unraveling each strand of it like the psychopath she is.
“I mean, seriously. I’m just tired of people assuming we’re together because– because I just happen to be a girl who is his friend. It all boils down to, ‘oh, Nancy must be leading him on! Poor guy! Must be so tired of the friend zone!’” Nancy pauses her higher-pitched impersonation to dig the heels of her palms into her eyes, groaning in a way that conveys her full frustration and then some. She continues for an encore, to which Robin nods along, short and sweet, “we’re not dating.”
When it’s quiet again, after that little outburst that even Nancy hadn’t expected, Robin takes a long sip off her beer, sets the can back on the nightstand, and lays down by Nancy. She spends a moment adjusting herself when the feeling of the bedroom rug makes her back itch.
“I get that,” Robin says, her voice coming out gravelly and tired. “I mean, not the whole way, maybe. But I get it. Lots of people think Steve and I are a piece– I mean, different situation, but it’s still annoying. I’m sorry I kept pushing it. I was just trying to be annoying.”
“Least you’re self-aware,” Nancy remarks, turning her head slightly to shoot Robin a tight smile. “I think I was wrong about you, too.”
“How so?”
“Well, I’d always figured you hated me because I was with Steve. Thought that’s why you always wanted to try picking on me.” Nancy huffs out a single laugh, gesturing with her hands. “You two were always so close. I figured, he found someone else who could do it better, and you were just playing up the catty jealous girl role. But, I think I always knew you could do all of that on your own.”
“I’m honored,” Robin says, wiping an imaginary tear from her eye. All of a sudden she’s turned serious, looking Nancy dead in the eye. “Please don’t say that I have to be nice to you just because you’re telling me all of this.”
“Wouldn’t even dream of it,” Nancy assures, turning onto her side to face Robin.
“Call me crazy,” Robin mutters, mirroring Nancy as she flips over on the rug, one hand falling between the two of them. “But I think I’m starting to like you.”
Nancy smiles. A genuine, grade-A smile. Robin zeros in on a smudge of red lipstick on her tooth. She remembers to smile back.
“Glad to see you turning over a new leaf, Rob. Life’s too short to ride the hate train all night.”