Chapter Text
Robin heard about it from Steve, who heard about it from Jonathan (of all people) that Nancy Wheeler was single. Unattached. Available. So on top of worlds colliding, her sister being abducted by a magical, evil veiny nightmare of a dude, her parents almost getting murdered, and losing El, Nancy Wheeler was no longer dating Jonathan Byers. Which Robin never would have really predicted because for as long as she’s been friends with these people, Nancy Wheeler has always been with Jonathan Byers.
It wasn’t just a fact, it felt like a law written in stone.
As suffocated as Nancy had looked over the last eighteen months by the presence of her boyfriend and ex, she never once mentioned breaking things off. She and Nancy weren’t, like, the best of best friends, but they talked. Gotten closer. (At least she thought they did.)
Every time Robin tried to bring up Jonathan (or Steve for that matter, because for some reason he seemed to be part of that equation again), she always got quiet. Told Robin that she was ‘working on it.’ Whatever that meant.
And she’s now explaining all of this to Vickie-her sweet, precious girlfriend-and the redhead is staring back at her like she has three heads or something and Robin doesn’t know what’s so confusing about what she’s saying.
“So you’re mad at her.”
Robin winces. “No, why would you say that?”
Vickie looks away and starts fiddling with the records that Robin so carelessly left after a show. “You just seem… offended.”
Offended?
Robin tries to trace Vickie’s logic, but she just can’t find it. She isn’t mad at her. There are things, Robin tells herself, that Vickie could never really understand.
Vickie knows about Demogorgons and the Upside Down and Vecna. But she doesn’t know a lot more beyond that. The shared memories, the shared trauma.
And it’s not Vickie’s fault.
How could it be?
But there were times like when Robin rests her head on Steve’s shoulder and cracks a joke with Dustin and pranks Lucas with Erica and quietly helps Nancy make sandwich after sandwich for all the kids who were attached to the Wheelers that she just knows that no one could understand this. That maybe she didn’t even want anyone (Vickie) to understand.
“I’m not,” Robin responds steadily, feeling like she was arguing about something that she really shouldn’t have to be arguing about. “She doesn’t even have the time to talk about a break up, okay? She’s like the head of the house right now with her parents in the hospital. Ted might not ever wake up. And by ‘house’ I mean the basement because that’s totally the only room that isn’t destroyed or covered in blood. And s-she’s trying to make sure Holly sleeps through the night and Mike doesn’t implode from grief. Grief is weird.”
She pauses. The image of El disappearing into nothing hits her again. It always hits her.
“And-and-and Mike has the rest of the party and Holly has Derek and Debbie and I have you and Steve has me and Dustin and Jonathan has Will and his mom. And here I am just thinking, spitballing really, who the hell is there for Nancy Wheeler if she’s just there for everyone else?”
Vickie takes a deep breath and turns back to look at Robin, who feels like a fucking asshole because her girlfriend keeps looking at her like she’s an alien or a creature or something very much not like her girlfriend. It unsettles Robin to her core, because this is Nancy she’s talking about. Nancy Wheeler.
“And… this is why you’re canceling our date tonight? Why don’t you just ask Steve to check in on her? Aren’t they friends?”
Robin groans because yes, they are friends. Nancy laughs at Steve’s jokes and spends a lot of time just watching the kids with him and there are moments that she can see him draw her out of dissociative stares.
But they’re also Nancy and Steve. There’s a history there, and while she might have gotten the cliff note’s version, she knows the ‘bullshit’ that Nancy had quoted at him still haunts even their sweetest moments. (And then there’s the Barb of it all.)
“Well, Steve’s, you know, Steve. He’s pretty much a dingus when it comes to girls. Especially Nancy Wheeler.”
Vickie huffs and crosses her arms. “And Jonathan?”
“Did you not just hear me?” Robin asks, genuinely asking even though she regrets the tone of her voice when she says it. “They just broke up.”
The stare Robin receives is wicked and Robin thinks the look would be hot if it was sent to anyone but her, but she can’t help but feel nervous this time. Nervous and slightly (maybe more than slightly) annoyed. Because she thinks that she’s explaining this perfectly and is being a good friend and isn’t doing anything wrong. But now she feels like she’s in trouble without being told she’s in trouble, which reminds her of her mom, and now she wants to be anywhere but here.
“And what if she doesn’t want you around? What then? You said it yourself, she didn’t tell you about the break up. Maybe she just doesn’t think you’re close. And, I mean, she’s obviously tough. Seems like she can take care of herself.”
Robin knows that Nancy can take care of herself. She knows that like she knows two plus two is four. But that doesn’t mean she thinks that Nancy should take care of herself.
“You know what? Robin, just go. Go see her. If you think she needs your help, she probably does.”
There is an obvious tone there. Robin might have struggled with social cues, but she knows what Vickie wasn’t saying. She just was going to happen to choose to not acknowledge it. If she didn’t know better, Vickie was telling her to go. To be a good friend. She could pretend that’s all she interprets from it. She was good at that with Vickie. Pretending.
“I’ll see you tomorrow,” Robin promises because she should. Not because it’s something she really wants.
Nancy Wheeler no longer looks at her in the eyes, and Robin doesn’t really mind that (eye contact is really hard, especially with someone like Nancy who had very pretty and intense eyes), but she knows that she should investigate it further. She knows when Nancy opens her front door and barely greets her before letting her in, it means something is wrong.
“Mike’s at the cabin I think with Will,” Nancy tells her like she expects Robin to want to see the other Wheelers as well. “And Holly’s with Derek. Can’t keep those two apart. Though I would appreciate it if he didn’t pass on all the dick jokes.”
“I made one,” Robin says, embarrassed. “About Steve. Before. You know. Do I get the official Nancy Wheeler Disapproval Stamp?”
A small corner of Nancy’s mouth twitches. “I remember. And yes, you do.”
“I don’t know how big his dick is,” Robin blurts out because she suddenly really wants Nancy to know that she hasn’t seen Steve totally naked despite how close they are. “I’ve never seen it. Just to clarify.”
“Only one of us then,” Nancy attempts at a smile, but it doesn’t reach her eyes that Robin is now desperate to look at.
Nancy looks like she hasn’t slept in weeks and Robin considers the real possibility that she hasn’t. She can’t imagine that sleeping in that basement was very comfortable. Especially when Will stayed over, too. And Max, who Holly clung to since everything ended. And if Will or Max were there, so was Lucas and Dustin.
Nancy leads Robin to the spotless kitchen to get her a glass of water. The kitchen is freakishly clean. Robin never would have known that a bloody massacre happened here and then she thinks of Nancy on all fours, cleaning up that blood all by herself. She knows Nancy. Knows she wouldn’t have let Mike or Holly touch it.
“I’m trying to clean up Holly’s room,” Nancy informs her nonchalantly (like there hadn’t just been blood covering the floor). “It’s a lot more work than I thought. Mom told me to wait until for professionals but I’m not—”
“Nancy,” Robin cuts in, “who cleaned the blood with you?”
“What?”
Nancy looks taken aback. Skittish even. She backs away from Robin slightly and almost looks frail when she asks the question.
Now she wants to ask her if she’s eaten anything in weeks.
“Did you clean it up by yourself?”
She rubs her forehead like she’s already frustrated with Robin. “Yes. Who else was going to do it?”
“Jonathan?” Robin suggests, ignoring the ice in Nancy’s voice. “Steve? Me? Anyone but you, really.”
Nancy’s jaw tightens. “Jesus, it’s not like anyone died here, Robin.”
Robin wonders if Nancy’s threshold of true horror was death and it sickens her stomach. How much did Nancy go through for her parents almost getting murdered seem like a non-event?
(She thinks about Eddie’s death. Nancy’s reaction wasn’t to grieve but to get the truth out there about him. She remembers her pleading with the cops, writing articles, going door to door telling anyone and everyone that Eddie Munson was a goddamn hero. She remembers Nancy holding Dustin after they all found him drunk at his grave, washing Dustin’s clothes covered in vomit so his mom didn’t find out, and teaching him how to nurse a hangover. She remembers Nancy visiting Wayne Munson and getting him flowers, convincing her brother to talk to him.
(She also remembers Nancy drunk herself, whispering into Robin’s ear that she was jealous of Eddie. Robin never knew if she meant she was jealous of him being dead or jealous of who Eddie got to be before he died. How he got to be himself.))
“You should have called me,” Robin says because it’s true.
“You were in your love nest with Vickie,” Nancy tells her and Robin almost detects a hint of spite there.
“I would have dropped everything to help,” Robin also says because it’s also true.
Nancy sighs. “I know.”
It reminds her of Steve, how he didn’t tell Robin he was doing poorly when she was supposed to hang out with Vickie. It didn’t matter how many times Robin told him that it didn’t matter, he refused to. (And told her that it should matter, that Robin shouldn’t be okay with dropping her girlfriend on a whim.) But Robin is a good friend. (She just might not be a good girlfriend.) That matters to her the most.
Nancy doesn’t tell her to leave. Instead, she wordlessly heads towards Holly’s bedroom and doesn’t say anything when Robin follows her.
The room is a disaster. Robin has the urge to tell Nancy that the room should be gutted-that Holly deserves a whole new room entirely. That the Wheelers should move to a new house that didn’t have to remind them of the shit that happened there.
Nancy gets on her knees and starts putting shit into trash bags. Robin doesn’t know how to help.
“If it were me, I’d beg your parents to turn the basement into my room. Jeez, this room gives me the heebie-jeebies.” Robin shivers at the thought of what happened in the room, the fear that now existed in the bones of the house.
“She’s been begging me to let her stay at Debbie’s,” Nancy admits, surprising Robin. She wasn't so sure that Nancy would say anything after what happened in the kitchen. “I haven’t had the heart to say yes yet. I just-Mom wouldn’t want me to let her out of my sight.”
Lie.
Robin’s heart aches for her, which isn’t a new feeling at all. She thinks about how much Nancy loves her siblings, how much she protects them, and her heart does this stuttering kind of thing that always ended up aching. Like she overused the muscle.
“When she does spend the night at someone else’s house, you can always stay at mine. Or I can come here. Whichever.”
Nancy remains quiet for a moment like she’s contemplative and Robin wishes that she had some telekinetic kind of power so she could read her mind.
“Worried I shouldn’t be left alone, Buckley?”
Robin feels herself get red. “Uh, no. No, not at all. I just thought it would be nice, you know? Sleepover? Like a girl space friend sleepover.”
“A girl space friend sleepover?”
Robin mentally slaps herself. “Yeah, it would be fun I think! We could watch movies and hang out and eat junk food and gossip about Steve.”
Nancy hums to herself. “Maybe.”
Robin tries to hide her grin, but she cannot help it. It feels like a victory, even if she feels like Nancy Wheeler is actively pushing her away. She immediately imagines laying in her bed with Nancy and then feels oddly guilty. Even though it was a friendly thing. A thing that friends did. She had them with Steve all the time. It was a normal thing for people their age to do. Very normal. And yet every time she pictures laying next to Nancy, it feels anything but normal.
“Shit,” Nancy hisses under her breath, grabbing all of Robin’s attention.
She looks down and finds blood on Nancy’s fingers. Still holding the piece of glass that cut her, Nancy starts picking up the other pieces.
“Nance, stop,” Robin pleads with her. “We can get a broom for that or something.”
The brunette doesn’t stop. Robin almost worries something has taken over Nancy’s body when she starts picking up more pieces to put into a box with a fervor. Like she was told she had to pick up all the pieces or else.
“Nance. You’re actively bleeding. I thought we were avoiding more blood spilling in the Wheeler house.”
“Almost. Got. It. All.”
Robin reaches out to just grab her shoulder so that she stops when Nancy pulls away. Sharply. Like Robin’s fingers were made of hot coal. But somehow worse than that, because she could see Nancy Wheeler picking up hot coal if she had to. Nancy looks pale. Eyes wide. Like Robin is a ghost or something.
“Fuck, sorry, I—”
“No, I’m sorry—”
“I just want you to stop picking up the damn glass and let me look at your hand so I can bandage it.”
“You can’t,” Nancy whispers. Her breathing is shallow. Her fingers tremble.
Robin actually rolls her eyes because she knew that she wasn’t Nancy’s favorite person on the planet, but the way that she was avoiding her makes her feel like Nancy sees her as some kind of monster.
“Can’t what?”
Nancy opens her mouth and then closes it. Again and again. Robin thinks that Nancy is going to tell her something horrible. Like that she hates Robin or hates that she was gay or something because this reaction made no sense.
“You can’t touch me, Rob.”
Rob. She swallows. Waiting for the rest of the explanation to come.
Water fills Nancy’s eyes and she glances down at her bloody hand. “If you touch me, I think I might die.”
Robin’s speechless. She doesn’t know words or words don’t know her and there’s no logical response to something so illogical. She thinks she might have heard Nancy wrong. That she must have.
“You mean, like…”
“Not literally,” Nancy softly sobs. “I don’t know. Maybe. It feels like it.”
Last time Robin checked, she doesn’t have super powers that cause people to die with touch. So what the hell was Nancy talking about?
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know,” Nancy says, shaking her head.
Robin tests a theory.
She moves closer to Nancy. The other woman backs up, but only slightly this time. Robin moves closer. Closer. Nancy’s crying so quietly she can barely hear her. It makes Robin want to cry too. Because she feels like Nancy’s cries deserve to be loud. To be heard.
Robin wipes away Nancy’s tears. Gently. Softly. Robin’s never been told she’s a soft person. Brash. Loud. A force. But she tries for Nancy. She tries so hard.
“See? No dead Nance yet.”
She wants to tell her to look at her, to tell her what’s happening, to make this all make sense to her, but she doesn’t. Instead, she scoops her up (because Nancy concerningly weighs like nothing) and places her on Holly’s bed.
(The blood gets all over Robin’s new sweater that Vickie had gotten her. She doesn’t mind. She’s sure this isn’t the first time Nancy got her own blood on her. There was nothing wrong with being stained by Nancy Wheeler.)
“Rob, please.”
She isn’t sure if Nancy is begging her to hold her closer or let go. Robin wraps her long arms around Nancy slowly, allowing her the space to tell her to stop at any second. When she doesn’t say anything, Robin squeezes her close, Nancy crying into her sweater.
“I’d tell you that it’s going to be okay,” Robin says, “but nothing is ever really okay, is it?”
And that, Robin realizes, is another thing Vickie would never-could never-understand. That things might change or she might adapt over time, but that time automatically doesn’t make everything better. It just makes things different. Time didn’t heal all wounds.
Robin cradles Nancy’s head and wonders why Vickie scolds her for not giving her enough physical attention. It was so easy with Nancy. It was second nature.
Nancy grips Robin’s sides so hard with her hands that Robin thinks it might bruise. Robin thinks of telling her to hold her tighter. To remind her that she wasn’t as weak as she looks. That she was here for Nancy’s taking. Any of her. All of her.
(She even thinks of Nancy’s hands everywhere. Kissing her so hard that their teeth clash. She doesn’t let herself hate herself for thinking this for once.)
“Sometimes I worry I’m just going to disappear,” Nancy finally mutters with a shaking voice, coming up for air. “That if I sit still long enough, I’ll just blend into my surroundings and float away.”
“I won’t let that happen,” Robin promises, and it feels like she’s making a vow for life. It doesn’t scare her as much as she thinks it should.
They lay like that for a while. Nancy buries her head back into Robin’s chest. Robin listens for Nancy’s heart beat. She doesn’t like silence, but at this moment, Robin doesn’t need words.
Eventually, they get up. Nancy allows Robin to help her with making dinner. Kids start showing up, sharing about their day. Lucas tells them that they’re all invited to his house for Thanksgiving. Mike asks if his parents would let them drink wine. Max talks about missing skate boarding. Holly asks a specific question about D&D that impresses even Dustin. Will compliments Nancy’s cooking.
(Robin watches as Nancy’s eyes look more and more tired, but she talks to each kid about something different, to show she really cares.)
They eat dinner like a family. Under Robin’s watchful eye, Nancy eats a few bites even. Robin thinks she could maybe get a few more bites in her later.
They argue about what movie they’re going to watch as Nancy does the dishes. Lucas offers to help, but she shoos him away. Robin dries the dishes and listens to Nancy hum a song she didn’t recognize.
(She knows pretty much every song that Vickie plays and likes them, but can’t help but think of ending things with her because of that. Because of, well, everything.)
They watch a movie and Robin talks through the whole thing. Nancy laughs a few times, which makes her ignore Dustin’s shushes even more.
She calls Steve, tells him that she’s at the Wheeler’s and is going to spend the night there. He sounds confused and relieved at the same time. She knows she wasn’t the only one worried about Nancy.
The boys and Max announce they’re going to sleep in his room. Nancy had removed most of the debris that had trailed into that room. Robin wonders how that many people were going to fit in his room, but Nancy doesn’t seem surprised.
“They must be packed like sardines in there,” Robin jokes quietly when Nancy puts a blanket over Holly after she had fallen asleep during the movie.
Nancy rolls her eyes playfully, but seems equally amused. “Sometimes I check on them in the middle of the night and they’re all piled in together. Tangled. It doesn’t look comfortable. But they… they look happy.”
Robin watches the way Nancy says the word happy. Like it’s something fragile. Borrowed.
“I can’t promise I won’t use that information against them.”
“I’ll show you some night,” Nancy promises her as she sets up her sleeping bag next to the couch that Holly was sleeping on.
It was the implication that there would be future nights that makes Robin’s heart start to race. But she doesn’t know what to say. She doesn’t even have some witty joke lined up about sneaking into Mike’s room in the middle of the night.
“The sleeping bag is big enough for both of us, don’t you think?” Nancy asks casually.
“Of course!” Robin stares at the sleeping bag that looks barely big enough for one person, let alone two adults. Nancy was rather small, but still.
Robin can’t stretch out, but she can smell Nancy’s shampoo and hold her tiny frame and kiss the back of her head. She doesn’t mind the torture of the sleeping bag scratching her skin or the sound it makes when one of them moves. Nancy fits against her like she belongs there.
And Nancy doesn’t pull away.
Instead, she thinks about what Nancy had said.
She’s uncomfortable. Cramped. Too aware of every inch of contact. And happier than she has any right to be.
Beside her, Nancy shifts closer.
Still here.
Not disappearing.