Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

A week before the debut, the practice room feels different.

Not louder. Not quieter. Just… tighter. Like the walls have leaned in a few inches when no one was looking.

Jonathan notices it first.

He’s been sitting on the same stool for twenty minutes, keyboard powered on, fingers hovering uselessly above the keys. The melody he’s been working on all morning keeps slipping away from him, dissolving the moment he tries to pin it down. Every sound feels wrong. Too sharp. Too empty. Like he’s pressing keys underwater.

Across the room, Steve is restringing his guitar for the third time.

Robin is upside down on the couch, legs draped over the armrest, reading liner notes from a printed mock-up of Fourth Room like she’s studying for an exam.

Nancy isn’t there yet.

Jonathan checks the clock again.

Steve notices.

He doesn’t say anything at first, just watches Jonathan out of the corner of his eye, the way he’s learned to do with people who pretend they’re fine. Steve has gotten weirdly good at that lately. He finishes tightening the string, strums once, then again.

“Okay,” Steve says casually. “That’s the fifth time you’ve stared at the door in ten minutes.”

Jonathan startles. “I - what?”

Robin flips right-side up immediately. “Oh my god, you’re right. He’s been doing that. I thought he was waiting for caffeine to kick in.”

Jonathan frowns. “I’m not.”

Steve sets the guitar down slowly. “You’re not what?”

“Waiting for something,” Jonathan says too quickly. “I’m just… distracted.”

Robin sits up, eyes narrowing. “That’s not a denial.”

Steve crosses his arms. “You’ve been weird all morning.”

Jonathan exhales. “I’m always weird.”

“Not like this,” Steve says. “This is… spiraling weird.”

Robin snaps her fingers. “Yes! This is pre-panic spiral weird. The kind where you pretend you’re calm but your soul is doing laps.”

Jonathan rubs his face. “Can we not do this?”

“Absolutely not,” Robin says cheerfully. “We are doing this.”

Steve tilts his head. “Is this about the debut?”

Jonathan latches onto that immediately. “Yes.”

Robin squints. “That was too fast.”

“It’s a big deal,” Jonathan insists. “It’s in a week. There’s press. There’s the video. There’s... expectations.”

Steve nods slowly, but his eyes don’t leave Jonathan’s face. “Okay. Sure. But you didn’t panic like this before the trailer.”

Jonathan opens his mouth, closes it.

Robin gasps. “Oh.”

Steve’s eyebrows shoot up. “Oh?”

Robin points between them. “He’s lying.”

Jonathan groans. “I’m not lying. I’m just, redirecting.”

Steve stares at him for a long second, then says carefully, “You like Nancy.”

Jonathan nearly falls off the stool.

“What?” he splutters. “No. No, I don’t. That’s - that’s not-”

Robin claps once. “OH. DRAMA.”

“I don’t like Nancy,” Jonathan says immediately, too immediately. “She’s... she’s my friend. We grew up together. That’s gross.”

Steve winces. “Okay, you didn’t have to call it gross.”

Jonathan runs a hand through his hair. “I’m serious. This isn’t about that.”

Robin leans forward. “Then what is it about?”

Jonathan hesitates.

Steve’s expression shifts to something softer, more perceptive. “Jon.”

There’s a beat. Then Jonathan sighs, shoulders slumping.

“…It’s her birthday,” he admits.

Robin blinks. “Her what.”

“Tomorrow,” Jonathan says quietly. “Nancy’s birthday is tomorrow.”

The room goes dead silent.

Then-

“Oh my god,” Robin breathes.

Steve stares at him. “You’re telling us this now?”

“I didn’t know how!” Jonathan says defensively. “Things have been busy, and I didn’t want it to be weird, and I didn’t want to make it a thing.. ”

“Jonathan,” Robin says, already half-panicking. “You are telling me that our princess”

Steve points at her. “our lead singer”

Robin finishes, “the emotional backbone of this entire band—”

Steve adds, “is having a birthday”

Robin: “during debut week”

Steve: “and you thought we’d be chill about that?”

Jonathan sinks lower on the stool. “I didn’t think you’d react like this.”

Robin jumps to her feet. “Steve.”

Steve is already moving. “Robin.”

“We have less than twenty-four hours,” she says.

“We have to do something,” he replies.

Jonathan holds up his hands. “Guys. Guys. She doesn’t expect anything. She hasn’t even mentioned it.”

Robin freezes. “She hasn’t?”

Jonathan shakes his head. “No. I think she’s… trying not to think about it.”

That gives them pause.

Steve slows. “Why?”

Jonathan hesitates, then answers honestly. “Because she misses home.”

The words land heavier than expected.

“Nancy hasn’t said it,” Jonathan continues, voice low. “But I can tell. She keeps checking her phone. She talks about her mom’s cooking like it’s casual. She pretends she doesn’t care, but—”

“She cares,” Robin finishes quietly.

Steve exhales. “Okay.”

Robin straightens. “Okay.”

Jonathan looks between them. “You’re… not mad?”

Steve shakes his head. “No. I’m mad you didn’t tell us sooner.”

Robin points at him. “But that just means we have to go bigger.”

Jonathan’s eyes widen. “No—”

“Bigger,” Steve repeats, already committed.

Nancy has no idea.

She comes into practice the next day humming under her breath, hair still damp from a rushed shower, a soft sweater slipping off one shoulder. She smiles when she sees them, warm and easy.

“Hey,” she says. “Sorry I’m late.”

“No problem,” Steve says too quickly.

Robin knocks over a chair.

Jonathan almost drops his phone.

Nancy pauses. “Did I walk in on something?”

Robin beams. “Nope!”

Steve nods aggressively. “Nothing at all.”

Nancy narrows her eyes. “You’re lying.”

Jonathan squeaks. “We are not!”

She laughs, shaking her head. “You’re all terrible at secrets.”

Robin exchanges a look with Steve.

Challenge accepted, that look says.

They get through practice somehow. Barely.

Nancy is radiant all day — focused, excited, nervous in a way that buzzes instead of weighs. Jonathan watches her laugh with Robin over a missed harmony, watches her close her eyes when she sings, like the room disappears when she lets herself be inside the sound.

And his chest tightens.

That night, when they tell her they need her to “come by the studio early tomorrow for a meeting,” she groans.

“On my birthday?” she teases. “Wow. Rude.”

Jonathan nearly caves right there.

The studio is dark when Nancy arrives.

She frowns immediately. “Hello?”

The lights snap on.

“SURPRISE!”

The room explodes into color — fairy lights strung everywhere, streamers taped badly to walls, a cake that is definitely too big for four people. Music blasts from speakers. Balloons bounce off the ceiling.

Nancy freezes.

Robin pops out from behind the couch. “HAPPY BIRTHDAY, NANCY”

Steve appears with party hats. “Put this on. No excuses.”

Jonathan stands a little apart, watching her face.

For a moment, Nancy doesn’t move.

Then her eyes fill.

“Oh my god,” she whispers.

She laughs and cries at the same time, covering her mouth. “You guys - you didn’t have to—”

Robin wraps her in a hug immediately. “We absolutely did.”

Steve joins, awkward but sincere. “You’re kind of important to us.”

Nancy’s voice shakes. “I thought… I didn’t think anyone remembered.”

Jonathan steps forward then, holding out a small box. “We did.”

She takes it with trembling hands. Inside is a delicate necklace — simple, silver, understated. Something she can wear every day.

“We saw it and thought of you,” he says softly.

"After like ten disagreements" Steve mutters.

Nancy breaks.

She cries openly now, clutching the necklace, leaning into all of them. “I miss my parents,” she admits through tears. “And Barb. And Mike and Holly. I hate that I’m not there.”

Robin strokes her hair. “You can miss them and still be here.”

Steve nods. “Both things can be true.”

Nancy looks at them - really looks.

“And I love you,” she says. “I don’t know what I did to deserve you, but… I love you.”

Jonathan swallows.Steve blinked rapidly. Robin felt something shifted in her chest.

They eat cake on the floor. Robin gets frosting on Steve’s jacket. Steve pretends to be mad. Nancy laughs until her stomach hurts.

For one night, the noise quiets.

And she isn’t alone.