Chapter Text
Robin
Robin didn't know what she expected her day to start with, but the last person she expected to see seated in the front row of her bio lab was Nancy fucking Wheeler.
It was the start of the spring semester of her freshman year at college, something she had saved every penny for after working countless jobs throughout high school, including the job she had now at family video. It had been raining when the girl awoke, which though annoying she preferred to the snow that usually dusted the midwest during the month of January,
With her luck, she had managed to not only wake up late that early Tuesday morning, but also not be able to find a parking spot close to the lab building which resulted in rain practically soaking her clothes because apparently, God was out to get her that day since she also had forgotten an umbrella. It had completely slipped her mind until she realized she had to trek (what felt like a million miles) to her laboratory building with only a fleece-lined denim jacket, which of course had no hood because she wasn't bright enough to plan accordingly.
This all led her to be late to her first bio lab of the semester, one of the general education courses she had been dreading due to her lack of interest in anything relating to science or stem in general. There she was, shoes squeaking from the water that clung to her so persistently, accidentally slamming the door against the wall as she flung it open in an attempt to rush into the classroom before she missed anything important and was marked absent on the first day of the semester.
If Robin had planned to sneak into the lab stealthily and slip into a seat as planned, that backfired immediately. The door made a thundering sound that even made her cringe and want to cover her ears, but doing that would draw way more attention and nearly everyone in the room had turned to see the commotion she was causing, hell, probably everyone in the state of fucking Indiana.
As she paused, clearly out of breath from her near running pace, Robin quickly went to mouth an apology to the professor and that's exactly when she spotted her.
She looked almost exactly the same as the last time Robin saw her, nearly six months ago, god was it longer than that? Her hair was the same length though a little less curly, more of a wavy texture than the tight curls she was used to. Her bangs just barely reached past her warm brown eyes, the eyes that now stared at her with an emotion Robin could only place as shock. She was wearing an oversized gray sweater that looked to be a couple of sizes too big but still warm and cozy. From this angle, Robin couldn't see what else she was wearing but she could only assume it was some sort of skirt, something she wore so often based on the countless times she had seen Nancy Wheeler at school and the mass collection she had once seen in her closet. She was clearly smarter than Robin it seemed, her hair was dry which could only indicate she had remembered to carry an umbrella with her when crossing campus.
Robin was sure she looked especially stupid, standing there with her wet, frizzy hair, her jacket and sweater splattered with raindrops, and the puddles forming at her red converse. She had never wished more to just sink into the ground and never be seen again, but god truly did not have any grace for her today. Her throat was dry as the words she meant to utter to the professor at the front of the class died at the tip of her tongue, too consumed by the pure shock and confusion drowning out any of her thoughts at that moment. She could only focus on her, with her big, soft doe eyes staring back at Robin for the first time in months.
The sound of the professor clearing his throat snapped her back into reality like a bucket of cold water, as if she needed to be drenched more, being dumped on her head. Robin's gaze darted up to the front of the classroom where the middle-aged man stood, his expression looking more and more irritable by the second. Only half listening, she heard him telling her to take a seat and realized she most likely was making a scene. Mumbling a quick sorry she slipped into one of the tables in the back that was closest to her, clumsily dropping her bag onto the ground beside her (which of course, was also drenched). He quickly resumed speaking about the topic he had been on before Robin stormed into the classroom and interrupted him, and by catching a few words she managed to gather he was going over the syllabus.
By that point, everyone had turned back around, but when she looked up she met the gaze of Nancy who was still looking at her with an emotion that Robin couldn't quite place. Surely surprise, maybe dread, annoyance, really any negative emotion was flowing into Robin's brain at the moment as she worked to decipher what the actual hell was going on. Robin wasn't sure how long they looked at each other, it could've been a second or it could have been hours. A faint ghost of a smile appeared on the other girl's face, so faint Robin wasn't sure if she imagined it, and then she quickly turned back around and faced the front of the room with her pencil in her hand.
A slew of emotions flew through Robin as she stared at the front of the classroom, eyes on the back of Nancy's head the entire time. Her stomach did a flip as it always did when she saw the brown-eyed girl, however, she didn't know whether that was because of the longing she felt or the utter unease.
The last time she had seen the other girl had been. . . quite complicated to say the least, the last time she had actually spoken to her that was. Of course, Robin had seen her when they graduated or in the halls during the last few weeks of school, but she had avoided Nancy like the plague. To outsiders, this wasn't weird in the slightest. the two really only spoke when the whole Vecna thing started so they never were seen as friends, much less anything else. To the party, they were simply just surviving and helping each other along the way.
However, that was a very different story than the reality Robin found herself in all those months ago during spring break. A spring break she had never been so terrified, yet hopeless and deeply falling for Nancy Wheeler at a rate she didn't think was possible.
An intense bitterness and hurt bit at her the longer she sat there with the shorter girl a couple of rows ahead of her. Her emotions were so overpowering Robin could've screamed into the void right then and there if she wasn't literally sitting in a biology lab. The anger and sadness were threatening to seep out of her as the seconds passed until finally, she realized she should be taking notes. Haphazardly, she rummaged through her backpack until she found a pencil and her notebook, flipping it open to the next blank page.
Focusing didn't go as planned, and even though she longed for a distraction she couldn't get her eyes to stay glued to the professor long enough for her to retain any information. The kid beside her probably thought she was insane with her leg bouncing up and down rapidly and her fingers tapping on the table in front of her.
Lab was shorter than it was supposed to be, most likely because it was the first class of the semester and they spent the time going over the syllabus as well as safety rules and assignments that would be due over the course. As soon as the professor dismissed them, Robin shoved her things into her bag as quickly as possible, hoping to be as fast as the speed of lightning.
As she stood up she briefly cast her gaze to where Nancy had been seated, surprised to find her wide eyes looking right back at her. Again, Robin couldn't tell what the expression she wore meant. To her, it looked as if Nancy was hopeful and glad to see her which surely couldn't be the case after the way things went down last time they interacted.
As Nancy's lips slowly began to open in form of a sentence, Robin didn't have it in her. She didn't have it in her to make small talk, pretend as if this was normal and they were just two old friends who happened to have a class together by pure luck. Instead, she ripped her gaze away from the gorgeous girl at the front of the classroom, darting out the door she had slammed open nearly an hour ago.
Robin could've sworn she heard the faint call of her name, but instead, she convinced herself that was want she wanted to hear, not her actual reality.
—
"Robin you're late, again!" The annoying voice of no other than her best friend, Steve Harrington, shouted at her from behind the counter that he was leaning against.
If you had told her back before the start of her senior year that she would be best friends with Steve, infamously known as the king of Hawkins High, she would've laughed so hard until she was crying. However, that was her life now, working at a home video store with one of her the people she never expected to actually talk to, after meeting him at Scoops Ahoy and then subsequently being held hostage by Russians under the Starcourt Mall. Yeah, she knew it sounded crazy.
"Again? First off I'm five minutes early, and secondly, you're late nearly every day dingus!" She retorted with a scoff, rolling her eyes as she walked behind the counter and let her bag slide off her shoulder.
"Okay well, I've been bored for three hours while I waited for you to get your ass in here and start your shift. Why did you have to go to college again and leave me with Keith? You know he can't stand me, he puts me up to the most ridiculous tasks!"
"I'm still here four days a week which frankly is too much for my liking, it's a blessing not having to see your face five days a week anymore," Robin teased, swatting at his head as he rolled his eyes at her.
Despite going to college, Robin still lived at home. Sure, she had saved enough money and scrapped up a loan for tuition, but there was no way in hell she could afford that and housing. Dorms were insanely expensive, as were apartments, so she stuck to commuting to campus every day. The college she attended was only thirty minutes away, which wasn't the most ideal but it was definitely doable considering her situation. She had managed to buy herself a car the summer after she graduated and maybe it was a piece of junk, but it still ran and was in her price range.
She still couldn't afford not to work though. Her classes prevented her from working full time like she was during the summer, but three to four days a week was all she could manage between classes and homework. She often found herself doing homework at the counter of family video when they were slow, she would like to say Steve helped but really he just made joking remarks as she scribbled down on paper, occasionally shoving her to make her mess up whatever she was writing.
After bickering back and forth for who knows how long, Robin finally got to work with organizing the tapes that had been returned that day. There was more than there should be, indicating to her Steve had been doing absolutely nothing before she came into the store.
"So how's the beginning of the semester? Excited for another round of hell? God, based on the amount of work you had last semester I'm glad I didn't go to college," Steve laughed as he handed her another tape.
That brought back what had happened earlier in the day, seeing Nancy in her biology lab. Frankly, it had been on her mind all day and she was somewhat surprised it had slipped her mind while she conversed with Steve. Seeing the other girl had shaken Robin up with so many feelings she wasn't even able to decipher them herself. Nancy had looked as beautiful as she remembered, maybe more so if that was possible. She hated herself for thinking that but it wouldn't stop running through her head, how she wished she could run her hands through Nancy's soft brown hair as she had once done. Then along with that came the emotions she was so familiar with, the ones she had experienced months ago. Pain, anger, frustration, hurt, any sort of negative feeling she didn't want to associate with the shorter girl.
She must have spaced out because the next thing she saw was Steve snapping his finger in her face. "Um hello? Earth to Robin!" Steve exclaimed in a loud voice, snapping her back into reality. shit, she thought, hoping he wouldn't pick up on her sudden mood change. He could read her like a book and this wasn't something Robin wanted to get into with her best friend.
"Sorry, sorry, I'm exhausted from waking up at eight this morning. school is already kicking my ass so maybe you're right about the whole no college thing," she finally stuttered out, letting out a sheepish laugh, hoping he believed her. Steve was focusing on another stack of tapes, facing away from her so thankfully he didn't see the panic written all over her face.
"Two days in and you're already this tired? Every time you mention school you make me feel better about working at a goddamn video store instead of choosing the conventional path," he chuckled, turning back around to her. "But seriously Rob, you got this. You're one of the smartest people I know," Steve said in a much more sincere tone, a small smile on his face.
Robin didn't know how to deal with this softer side of him most of the time, and the guilt of what she was hiding only made her not know how to reply. Finally, she returned the smile before adding in a playful roll of her eyes, "Thanks dingus, but the bar for smartest people you know is probably pretty low considering who you hung around in high school."
"Hey! I'll have you know I'm friends with a bunch of nerds now, and maybe they're children but they're damn smart, don't ever tell Henderson I said that, so you should take it as a compliment!" Steve shot back, though without any actual malice. From then the two returned to bickering about god knows what, Robin's heart slowly settling back into its normal rhythm.
A couple of hours went by and the more she thought about Nancy Wheeler because naturally, that's where her mind had wandered back to, the more she felt guilty. She never kept any secrets from Steve, the one exception being Nancy and everything that had happened between them.
During the whole Vecna tirade, Robin was convinced that Steve and Nancy had a thing for each other, hell everyone was. What turned out to be true though was that it was only one-sided, with Steve being the one pining after her. Ultimately after the fall of Vecna and the fact that nothing happened between the two of them, he chalked it up to getting swept up in the moment and the egging on of others only made his feelings seem more real and in-depth than they were.
When he explained it to her, she couldn't help but feel glad and relieved. Steve had said though he cared deeply for her and some part of him would always love her (though he did not mean in love, he was sure to clarify), he knew, in the end, they could never be something again. They both had changed too much, and though Nancy didn't blame Steve for what happened with Barb, that didn't mean a relationship between the two of them wouldn't serve as a constant reminder of that traumatic event. When Robin had listened to Steve, she couldn't tell if he was still upset by that fact or not, though she didn't push it.
Now it was about closing time. With all the tapes sorted and no customers in the store, the two employees were behind the counter in an intense conversation about whether or not the girl Steve had previously been flirting with minutes ago was into him. After bickering back and forth like a couple of siblings for longer than she honestly wanted to, there was a small lull in the conversation and Robin took it as her cue to mention what had happened that day.
"So! Do you still talk to Nancy?" Robin blurted out, her voice higher than she had meant for it to be.
Steve raised an eyebrow at her, slightly confused by the sudden change in subject but not pressing it. "Wheeler? I mean occasionally, we'll talk on the phone sometimes but it's not like a weekly thing. I think she gets lonely living on campus with everyone she knows back here in Hawkins, but she would never admit that to me," he snorted, a small smile playing on his lips before a look of confusion overtook his features. "Wait why are you bringing Nance up? You two friends now?" The boy asked, not accusingly but more with curiosity.
Heart hammering against her chest more than she liked to admit, she wrung her hands together before replying. "What?! Wheeler and I friends? No, we're not, I was just wondering. She's in my biology lab of all places which I know shouldn't be surprising considering we go to the same college, but campus is kinda big and I expected to not see her let alone have a class with her, Trust me I did not expect to see her. In fact, it shocked me-" she was abruptly cut off by Steve as the words quickly spewed out of her mouth.
"Jesus Rob you're rambling again and I can only take it for so many hours," He scoffed playfully. if he picked up on her nerves he didn't show it.
"Not sure why you're so surprised, did you at least say hi to her?" Her friend questioned, leaning back against the counter.
"Well no, I had a class right after lab and I was late to bio in the first place so there was no time," Robin chuckled dryly, trying her best to seem nonchalant and not like her anxiety was sky high. It wasn't a complete lie, she did have a class after lab but it was an hour later. Steve could never keep track of her schedule though so he didn't pick up on it.
"You should next time you have that class, like I said I feel like she's lonely without any of her friends from high school up there. Besides, you two went through whole other-dimensional, monster-fighting, shit during spring break so that's something to bond over. I'm honestly not sure why you didn't become friends in the first place after all that because you seemed to be getting along well," her counterpart shrugged, giving his two cents without being asked.
They didn't have anymore time to get into the subject of Nancy Wheeler, the store was technically closed and both were itching to go home and fall into bed. Robin only responded with a "yeah, maybe," before the two quickly swept the floor and locked the doors of family video for the night.
Yelling out a goodbye to her best friend and also giving him a friendly middle finger as she climbed into the car, she immediately let her head fall onto the steering wheel of the beat-up sedan she drove, releasing a heavy sigh.
Be friends with Nancy Wheeler? Yeah, that didn't work out the first time she tried, and over her dead body was she about to try again.