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Nancy needs a break.
From everything, basically her whole life, if she's being honest with herself. But mostly from the black tendrils she still has nightmares about, the throbbing hurt that had been left in her chest when she and Jonathan broke up, anything and everything that had happened in just a few short years. Things had hesitantly returned to normalcy, Hawkins once again just a small town with too many people, but she didn't join them. Couldn't. Not after Vecna had slithered into her brain, had shown her Barb lifeless and decaying in the bottom of Steve's pool. She doesn't know if she'll ever be able to get over that image, even with Vecna gone. Or dead. She's not sure. But she knows he's not here, and that’s all that matters to her.
His absence hadn’t done much to change her fears. She still feels cut off, unmoored, her anchor never finding ground. She’d stopped eating as often, had let her hair relax out of the curls she’d so patiently sat for, and let Hawkins move around her. It could pass her by, for all she cared.
Her prayers are answered in the form of Steve Harrington.
Summer had broken quick and hot, temperatures soaring after they had taken down Vecna—as if his very existence had been sucking the life out of the town. Maybe it had been. But the sun rises brutal and bright in late April, burning away clouds and springtime chill, and Hawkins bursts into color, trees reaching for the sky and flowers blooming in their gardens. In her memory, as far back as she could recall, it had never gotten so warm so fast in Indiana. Winter liked to sink its claws in deep and linger, snow still clouding the ground even into May, sometimes, and temperature determinedly staying somewhere halfway between spring and winter. She’d just looked out the window one day, and there it was: golden sunbeams filtering through the curtains in her room, evergreen leaves rustling in a warm, humid breeze.
This early, it made the summer feel infinite, endless, bright sun and glittering green leaves stretching far beyond where she could reach. It had seemed like a sign—Hawkins was healing, finally, and maybe she should, too.
“Nancy!” Steve says in lieu of a hello, a how are you doing, any semblance of an introduction unforthcoming. She’s not surprised by this; it’s pretty in line with Steve’s brand new, excitable character. He’d dialed up the energy lately, but she can’t say she minds that much. It’s refreshing, having someone that refuses to be brought down by the darkness that had hung over the town. “You busy?”
“Hi, Steve,” Nancy says patiently, watches Mike where he sits and stares at the kitchen table. His back is to her, but she thinks she knows what his face must read as: exhaustion. Tentative relief, same as hers. She turns away, faces into the kitchen to give him some privacy. “No, I'm not busy.”
“Great! Meet me at the quarry. Robin and Eddie will be there. Bring lemonade!” and he hangs up just like that, leaving the annoying drone of the dial tone buzzing in Nancy's ear. She stares at the phone for a second before she puts it back into the cradle where it belongs.
Nancy can’t remember the last time she had seen the three of them all at once and spent more than a couple of minutes talking to them. Eddie? Probably not since Vecna had still been a threat, his Hellfire t-shirt ripped and dirty and his face drawn, cheekbones sharp and new lines cropping up in his face, the ordeal aging him beyond his years. Robin, she saw at Family Video on occasion, always smiling and talking to Nancy like she had never all but disappeared, slipping easily back into the tentative friendship they’d started ever since they’d partnered up in Victor Creel’s house. She liked that the most—it made Nancy feel like nothing had ever changed, that despite it all, she was still normal. Still herself. She thinks Robin must have understood that, somewhere. Out of the group, she saw Steve the most, with his puppy-dog eyes and the frown lines around his mouth, always worrying for Nancy’s well-being. He’d swing by her house, or he’d call her up, and she would give him short answers, expression tight, only holding onto herself by the barest thread.
That was the worst for her. She didn’t like worrying Steve, but it was hard for Nancy to pretend like she was still the same person. She had been through so much, just like the rest of them, but it felt…different, for her. More isolating. She’d nearly been in Vecna’s clutches in a manner nobody except Max had, and Max had drawn into herself much like Nancy did, spending her days in Lucas’s company and not very many others’. Steve showed he cared, and the depth of it brought tears, sometimes, sobs she tried to breathe through without success.
The town is flourishing on her drive through it, kids jumping and pushing each other on the sidewalks, people walking their dogs around the town center, and despite her introspection and her slightly downtrodden mood, it’s nice to see Hawkins so…alive. Fresh. The town feels inhabited again, businesses returning to their storefronts, green grass billowing in front of the town hall, and the air is fizzing with potential, bees buzzing and birds chirping just out of sight.
That it feels promising to have Hawkins finally moving on, leaving its suffering in the past.
She pushes open the door of the grocery store, nearly being mowed over by a harried-looking mother with a baby in the back of her cart. The woman doesn’t apologize, but Nancy doesn’t fault her for it; Lord knows she’s spent enough time lost in her own head and unaware of her surroundings, or of the people in them. The general store is bustling, fizzing with the energy pent-up from cold days and colder nights, fresh fruit just starting to ripen and hit the shelves. Nancy weaves and dodges the crowd as best she can, filtering out the noise and the press of people on all sides. She can’t remember the last time the supermarket was this busy, teenagers trying to distract cashiers to pilfer gum and their parents congregated at the beginnings of aisles, conversations dragging out into long minutes.
Worried she’s going to not find what she needs at all, Nancy ducks down one of the quieter aisles, returns the perfunctory smile an older woman sends her as she passes by. She makes her way to the cooler, clenches her fist over her chest in a tiny celebratory movement when she finds it still full of lemonade, an employee nearby refreshing the whole section with bottles upon bottles of juice. They’ve sold out before at the height of July, pink-faced and sweating fathers leaning heavily on the counters to argue with the teens working the registers, and Nancy is glad to see they’re putting in some steps to prepare for the inevitable flood.
She stores the glass jugs in her front seat and slides behind the wheel, engine cranking to life when she turns the key. Nancy backs up carefully, eyes on her mirror and over her shoulder, and as she pulls back out onto the main street, she peers out the window again, studying Hawkins as it crawls by. Past city limits, where the woods grow tall and dark, pine trees scenting the air sharp and evergreen, it still feels welcoming, rabbits bounding through the underbrush and daylight shimmering off the asphalt, uneven and tricky. No longer is the wilderness heavy with silence, animals fearful and hiding in their homes, and Nancy is not hesitant to admit that she likes it much better like this.
When she pulls up beside Steve's car a short time later, sunglasses firmly over her eyes, Steve is already running towards her, shoulders slightly pink. There are water droplets clinging to his hair, and his mouth is in a grin so wide it must hurt, his hand around the door before she's even stopped the car. Her heart gives a little lurch, and she returns the smile with a quirk of her own lips. She can't help the warmth that blooms in her chest—after everything, Steve is still her friend, still a shoulder she'd been able to lean on if she'd needed to. She hadn’t quite been able to reach across that gap, her house phone always cold and one number away from his own when he hung up, but she knows she had him. Has him, still, if his attempts to call her every week are anything to go by.
“Nancy! You came,” he approaches her with, as if he didn't expect her to show, which—hurts, but she can’t blame him for the surprise in his expression.
The burgeoning friendship the four of them had built hadn't exactly lasted through their shared trauma, almost entirely because of her. Solely because of Nancy, if she was keen on admitting it to herself. She knew the three of them still saw each other, laughing and joking in the video store, in the mall, sometimes, when she stopped by—she'd wave, and say hello, but she'd closed herself off to them. How could she tell them how horrible it had been to have Vecna breathing down her neck, how brutal and viscerally painful it had been to see Barb like that? They'd all been through terror, through pain and death and more, but she was on an island all her own. They weren’t faced with their greatest fears, nor their harshest mistakes.
In the end, Vecna had made sure she was alone. He'd planted the seed in her mind, and it'd grown into a tree with roots built of isolation and solitude. Steve, Eddie, and Robin were there, but she couldn’t bring herself to seek the support she needed. Steve had never stopped inviting her, and Nancy had never stopped saying no.
And Jonathan, despite his understanding, his sensitivity, hadn’t helped. He hadn’t been there when she needed him most, his voice tinny and faraway in California. She'd broken up with Jonathan shortly after Hawkins had settled, another blow to an already huge hole punched through her. She didn't regret the decision, his quiet, accepting, “I get it,” more than she could have hoped for, but it was still painful. He was still her friend, an important piece of her, and she'd lost him just like she'd lost so many others in her life. They both needed space to heal, and she hadn’t wanted to ask for guidance when he was going through a difficult enough time on his own. Their relationship had run its course, but she knew it was still hurting him, even hundreds of miles away.
But she couldn't keep hiding—and here she was, pointedly not hiding. Baby steps, she thinks, a restart that she's starting to regret as soon as she sees Robin down by the water wearing one of Steve's shirts, buttoned loosely over what Nancy thinks might be an athletic brassiere. Steve hasn't worn that shirt in years, the pattern too loud and floral for even Hawkins's breeziest summer days, but it's still his. Not Robin's. Steve's.
It's stupid. She knows it's stupid to feel any kind of way about it. But something hot and ugly still burns through her, settling slick and green in her gut—something that feels a lot like jealousy. Robin and Steve had been so determined to convince her they weren’t seeing each other, but that had been weeks ago. Months, surely. Things change. She swallows the acrid taste, refocuses on Steve's open, expectant face. She's suddenly glad for the sunglasses; Nancy has no idea what her face would be reading as otherwise.
“Of course I did. You invited me,” she replies, as if it's that simple—as if it's ever been that simple. Neither of them mentions how many times she said no before now. They don’t talk about Steve’s crestfallen face every time, or the thread of worry in his voice when he asked if she was sure. She pops open the door, waits for him to back up before she’s stepping up and out into the summer sun, shielding her eyes from its glare despite the dark glass filtering her vision. “What did you need the lemonade for?”
Steve just grins, boyish and secretive, and Nancy knows that look. She rolls her eyes without commenting further, hands over the two cartons she'd picked up from the store. Steve takes them gingerly and dips out of view behind the open trunk of his car, Nancy pointedly ignoring the clink of glass bottles being moved around.
The quarry stretches out and wide and glimmering in front of her car, water rushing gently over the shore as the sun beats steadily down on cresting waves, polished blue and green as sea glass. The rocky crag that surrounds it is a smooth gray, mica sparkling in its craggy surface, and the trees that line the very top are emerald and bright, leaves bowing in a breeze that tugs at the ends of her hair. It brings the promise of change, of new beginnings, and she inhales the fresh scent of lake water and citrus that tinges the air, enjoys the way it expands her lungs.
Despite its beauty, the quarry is only known for two things: partying and swimming. Nancy can’t remember how many times Hopper has had to swing by and shut things down, or how many times she’s been at those exact parties. It would figure that Steve wants to aim for both, if his presence by his car is any indication. But there are far less people, a total count of four, and it comforts her to know that Steve hadn’t gone crazy and started calling people up now that Nancy was out and about again. He knew Nancy wouldn’t have been receptive to it, and she appreciates how much he’s grown, how thoughtful he is now.
He certainly knew how to throw a party. Nancy considers it a flaw and a positive characteristic of his personality, though now, in her more adult years, she usually leans into the former.
“Wheeler!” Eddie crows from down by the water, and he waves huge and excited when she tips the glasses up over her forehead, his hair in a tangled, wet mess around his shoulders. She's impressed when he sprints over the rocky, slippery beach without falling, shocked still and ramrod straight when he wraps her up in a cool, clammy hug. She sees Robin wander after him, smile similarly bright, but she hangs back. Hesitates. “The badass returns,” he says against her hair, and when he pulls away, he's grinning, hands around her shoulders. His greeting makes her heart swell, warmth fizzling between her ribs like cola. “Welcome back.”
“Hey, Nance,” Robin says from behind Eddie, hair similarly tangled, eyes oceanic blue in the bright shine of midday. Her voice has that same rasp as always, and the thing is—
The thing is, they're friends. They'd covered that through and through in the library, when they'd sprinted away from facility security, and when they'd faced Vecna together, hands tangled up for bravery. She and Robin had come a long way since Nancy’s irritation at her suddenly showing up, loud and sarcastic and witty, as if she had been by Steve’s side all along, slotted in neatly alongside him like the puzzle piece that had always been missing. Somehow, she felt she and Robin had continued to grow after that, when Robin had assured her that she and Steve weren’t dating multiple times, always with an intensity that bordered on desperation, and Nancy had finally bought it.
But Nancy can't get over Robin standing in front of her, in Steve's shirt, as if that's normal. As if friends did that all time. As if Steve hadn't given her his Letterman jacket when they'd been dating, proud to show her off. Robin's face is earnest, tinged with anxiety, her hands shoved deep into the pockets of the short trunks she's wearing.
“Hi, Robin,” Nancy manages, tentative and small as their first interactions, when Nancy had tried to avoid talking to Robin as much as she could—lest she be reminded of how close Robin and her ex were. How close they continue to be. Robin’s eyebrows furrow, and her smile is a little sideways, more of a grimace than a genuine dimpling. A wall comes up between them, one that hadn’t existed for months, as if they're right back where they started. Or close to it, trying to feel each other out without directly asking. Nancy wants to take it back, offer Robin the same warmth she’d offered Steve and Eddie, but Steve is suddenly there and shoving a plastic cup into Nancy's hand, and then one into Robin’s. Eddie takes the third one from Steve and lifts It above them.
“A toast,” Steve invites, raising his drink to touch Eddie’s, and Robin’s expression has cleared once again, storm clouds rolling away as she follows suit. Nancy doesn’t dwell on her lame greeting, nor does she think about the sick, twisty feeling that’s still rolling around in her stomach.
“You have some catching up to do,” Eddie agrees, and Nancy finally joins her drink to theirs, plastic clicking where they come together. “To a reunion amongst friends.”
“Here, here,” Robin says, and she tips her cup back, takes a long swallow. Her throat flexes, pretty and pale, and Nancy hides her face in her own drink, sipping slowly—and she coughs, almost immediately, glares at where Steve is unsuccessfully hiding a smirk behind the lip of his.
“Steven Harrington,” she grits out, voice rough-edged with vodka, and Eddie’s eyebrows go up, grin twisting into something wicked. “Did you even put any lemonade in here?”
“Maybe a splash,” Steve answers, completely unbothered by Nancy calling him by his full name, or by the color that’s appeared high on her cheeks, pink and uncomfortable. “Eddie said you needed to catch up, so. Drink up.”
“Whoa, hey, Harrington. Don’t pin this on me,” Eddie says, lifts a hand in a warding gesture. His gaze flits to Nancy, a hint of real worry, and Nancy finds herself relishing in the sway she still has. “That was all you.”
“Really? ‘Cause I remember—”
“Okay!” Robin throws in, blunt enough to stop the bickering that’s sure to start. “How about we forget about it, huh? Enjoy the nice weather?” she suggests, sweeps both her arms out to encompass the environment before them: fresh, sprouting trees, water lapping at the shore, minerals sparkling at the top of the quarry’s cliff face. The sun spills gold over her face, the crown of her head, lighting her hair yellow-blonde, and Nancy thinks of sunflowers, of daffodils pushing up through the last remnants of frost in early spring.
That’s all it takes to calm the fervor they’d both gotten swept up in, and they both toss back the rest of the borderline-terrible cocktail Steve had made up, running in tandem down to the water’s edge. She expects them to hesitate, wade in slow and careful, but Eddie dives in, unabashed and brave, and Steve naturally follows suit, immediately complaining about the chill as he resurfaces. Eddie paddles out further, slicks his bangs back over his head, and Nancy can hear him call Steve a wimp from here. Steve shoots back shut up, Munson, but there’s no heat behind it, the two of them venturing out until she can barely hear them, water up to their chins.
Robin knocks back the rest of her lemonade and wanders towards Steve’s car, a cool breeze off the water rucking her collar out of place, and Nancy watches her fiddle with the bottles, fingers tapping over each one. It reminds her of their first interaction in the library months ago, when Robin had oscillated wildly between letting silence seep in and breaking it with little pinpricks of reassurance and questions, knocking at the newspaper reel to get her attention. She doesn’t do that now. Nausea churns in Nancy’s throat, at the hinge of her jaw, and Nancy attempts to ignore it, switches her gaze down to her cup and toys with the very edge of it.
Nancy leans back against the hood of her car, pushes herself up to sit on the warmed surface, content to wait a little longer to broach the water and see if she can't breach the distance she'd unintentionally erected between her and Robin, too. The water's still going to be freezing this time of year, firmly entrenched in winter’s talons, and it's a good enough excuse to provide if anyone asks why she hangs back. The quarry was always last to turn to spring, to summer, as if it couldn’t quite let the cold season go. She understood the feeling, fright slick as oil always lingering just out of sight, right where she couldn’t see it. It stayed slyly at the corners of her mind, pulling the blanket over her eyes or tying up her stomach into knots at the worst of times.
Kind of like how a weight sits just off-center in her now, as if she’d swallowed a rock.
She’s surprised when Robin joins her, leans her lower back just to the side of where Nancy sits—not close enough to touch, but for there to be a whisper of a chance. Nancy’s elbow just barely brushes the back of Robin’s shirt (Steve’s shirt, her mind cuts in, not very kindly). Robin’s upper back is tense, neck bent towards the ground, and she doesn’t say anything, just goes on staring at the sparse grass at her feet. Nancy studies the knobs at the very top of her spine, bony and sharp, tracing the very ends of her hair brushing her collar with her gaze.
“Did I say something again?” Robin asks out of the blue, and Nancy meets her eye when she half-turns, Robin tucking her lip behind her teeth. There’s anxiety knotted in the base of her neck, her fingers tap-tapping at the side of her drink. “Because, I know—I know it’s been a while, and I have this really great habit of saying things I shouldn’t, and—and—all I said was hey, Nance, but maybe that was too much, like I could’ve—“
“No,” Nancy answers, slides her finger through the moisture collecting on the outside of her cup. “You didn’t do anything wrong,” she assures her, but that’s all she has in her. Nancy wants to rush out an explanation and lend more credence to the fact that she and Robin are fine, mostly, if she can get past the shirt thing, but she doesn’t have the energy to navigate that minefield of a conversation yet. Nancy takes another biting sip of the lemonade, clears her throat against the sting of it as she swallows.
“Are you okay, Nancy?” Robin asks, question aimed at the ground again instead of towards Nancy, but she knows it’s meant for her. Nancy flinches at the query, but she flinches more at how reserved Robin is, as if she’s expecting for Nancy to brush her off. Nancy wants so badly to be honest, and more desperately still she wants to reach that downy soft, budding relationship they’d begun to cultivate again, forget how unsteady she feels around the other girl.
Maybe it's the vodka Steve had put entirely too much of in Nancy's drink. Maybe it's how she's drawn to Robin after it all, despite the sarcasm and the way she takes up so much space, unselfconscious and free. Despite the shirt she’s currently wearing, a clear advertisement of Steve Harrington is my boyfriend. Maybe it's the soft edge of her jaw, the smudged eyeliner in the dark circles beneath her eyes that Nancy can see when she turns her head out to the shore. It makes her look vulnerable, younger than her years, and Nancy wonders if Robin has been losing sleep like Nancy has—if she lies awake at night, staring at the ceiling, wondering at her life and where it went wrong.
Nancy knows where she went wrong. It had started with her jumping into the decisions she thought were right for her, that she was supposed to choose, and finding herself sinking rapidly, drowning underneath the weight of her choices. Doing what she was always told to, letting life lead her with a firm, guiding hand.
It was time to change the trajectory she was on. Open new doors, set down unexplored paths without a map. She wants that burgeoning relationship with Robin back, the one that made her stomach swoop oddly when Robin grinned at her or nudged her shoulder up against hers on the counter at Family Video or teased her the same way she does all her friends. Robin is taking a sip from her drink, condensation clinging to her cup, and Nancy tells the truth.
“We're not together anymore,” she blurts out, and Robin coughs, halfway to choking, surprise in the upward tilt of her brow. Her head turns on a swivel, shoulders following, bright eyes sharp and curious. Nancy continues without looking at her. Her own gaze is on the water, where Steve and Eddie are splashing, their laughter breaching the distance between the waves and where they lounge at her car. “Jonathan and me. It just—it wasn't working.”
“Oh, shit. Sorry, Nance,” Robin murmurs, and her voice is raspy, a little rough from the citrus or the booze, Nancy’s not sure—all she knows is it sends a scorching, squirming feeling through her gut, like she used to get when she'd catch Steve's eye over the edge of a textbook in the library.
Nancy likes that Robin used the nickname. She shoves that knowledge deep, deep down, where it's safer.
“It's okay. We weren't...what the other needed, I think,” she continues hesitantly, isn't sure where she's headed with this. Robin stares at her quietly, appraising, and Nancy chances a look at Robin’s face. Robin’s gaze is seeking and inquisitive, heavy on Nancy’s temple. She looks away, just in time for Eddie to crash into Steve, and Nancy smiles to herself despite the topic, watches Steve wrestle with the other boy. “I needed him here when—when everything happened, and he wasn't.”
“I get it,” Robin says simply. “I had Steve and Eddie when I needed them. They made it better.”
Nancy's absence goes unspoken, but Nancy acutely feels the weight of it in Robin's words, how the other girl carefully edges around saying it out loud. Nancy hadn’t been there when she should have been. Nancy focuses on the worst possible part of Robin's sentence instead, grasping at straws, eager to skip over her own self-imposed isolation.
“I know Steve must have been a big help,” she ventures, and it hurts all the way up her throat, clawing and coy. “Did he finally ask you out?”
“Oh, Nancy, we're not—” and Robin huffs a laugh that sounds a little exasperated, shakes her head so hard that there's a brief, brilliant cascade of water droplets in every direction. Nancy thinks Robin must be tired of her asking, but she’s tired of feeling like she’s on the outside, looking in, not cut into some secret or joke Steve and Robin share. “We're not dating. Still. Didn't I tell you that already? I feel like I told you that.”
“You did.” Nancy presses her tongue to the inside edge of her teeth, tries to pick and choose her words between the loud buzzing in her brain. She shouldn't have aimed to get through even half of her cup; this feels like a conversation she would’ve handled prior to humoring Eddie’s toast, or Steve’s still-present antics. She looks down into her half-full cup (or is it half-empty?), tips it back and forth to watch the cloudy liquid swirl about. Another sip might instill her with some liquid courage, but it could just as soon backfire on her. She doesn't risk it. “But you're—you know.” She gestures at Robin without looking at her, an uneasy flick of her wrist. “You're wearing his shirt.”
Finally, she's said it, she’s inhaled and puffed out her chest and pushed through the discomfort to tackle the subject. Jonathan would be proud of her bravery, she thinks, because so often she didn't rise to conflict, let discontent pass over her like mist drifting down a mountain's peak. And Robin—Robin looks down at the messily done buttons, something that looks a lot like panic slackening her expression. Nancy knows she’s hit on something, but the confirmation is unpleasant and biting, tiny teeth sinking into her nape.
“Nancy, listen—”
“And it's fine, you know? It's totally cool with me,” Nancy pushes on, speaking over Robin's words, because she can't hear these excuses again, but she can't hear the alternative, either: that Steve finally asked, and that Robin said yes. She had always figured it had only been a matter of time. Steve was the king of Hawkins high, handsome with all that hair and those easy smiles, and Robin is beautiful in her own way, tomboyish and tall, quick to joke and even quicker to laugh. Nancy knows her voice is sharp, a little wobbly, but she doesn't stop. “Because you and Steve are my friends, and I want what's best for you. I want you both to be happy. Like you said. And if that's dating each other, that's fine, but you don't have to keep pretending like—”
“Nancy,” Robin interjects, sharp and desperate, a knife cleaving cleanly through Nancy's spiel. Nancy shuts up, audibly hears her teeth click together. “You're right—we are friends. You and I are friends.” And Nancy alternatively burns hot as lava, and then ice cold, a blizzard chasing the hot flash of anxiety and…anger? Disappointment? She feels like she's been hit square in the chest. It reminds her of that time Mike accidentally knocked a baseball into her sternum, a friendly game turned frightened as she gasped for air, hand pressed hard to the space between her lungs.
“We're friends,” Robin repeats, and Nancy tries to be patient, nearly bites through her tongue with how hard she’s resisting the urge to interrupt. She wants to snap at Robin to come out with it, to take the step off the edge of the cliff already—but it’s not fair to demand that of her. She’s struggling, Nancy watching her tuck both her lips under her teeth, release them, and repeat. “And friends tell each other the truth. So, I'm—” she stops, runs her finger over the rim of her cup repeatedly, an anxious tick. Robin hesitates, and Nancy’s sure she’s going to drift away, that her sanity is going to drop like leaves rattled off trees during the fall.
“I'm gay, Nancy. Like—gay, completely homosexual,” Robin admits, all in a rush, her words crowding together like the waterfall that comes after a dam breaks. "I like girls."
And Nancy's world stops spinning, tilted off its axis for a second as it narrows to a single point—the somehow extremely simple fact that Robin is a lesbian. That she's not dating Steve. That Robin is, as she had so eloquently put it herself, completely homosexual, and that Nancy somehow overlooked the possibility that Robin wasn't interested in Steve for a very real, very easily explainable reason: he isn't a girl. Why had she been so obtuse? Heat sings through Nancy, but it's different this time; it's blistering and radiant as a streak of lightning, and Nancy doesn't know what to do with it. She wants to crawl out of her skin, and she wants to wrap Robin up tight, and she wants—she doesn’t know what she wants.
Because—Nancy is aware of gay people. In theory, anyway, she knows there are boys who like boys and girls who love girls. It's a fact she'd accepted long ago, even with the judgment and the venom most people around her held for them. She didn't give it much thought when she was younger—and then there was Barb. Lovely, kind Barb, with her high-collared shirts and her short hair and her hand lingering in Nancy's. Nancy had suspected. She had never quite stirred up the courage to ask, and now Barb was gone. She'd never know, and she'd never get to tell Barb that it was okay, that Nancy could never hate someone for who they loved. That maybe, just maybe, Nancy was on her side. That she held the same small, fluttering secret against her chest like a baby bird, nurtured it close and quiet.
“And if that makes you uncomfortable, it's fine. Really. It wouldn't be the first time.” Robin chuckles, a little bitterly, scrubs a hand roughly through her bangs, and Nancy refocuses. They stick up slightly, and Nancy wants to smooth them down, wants to reach out and take Robin's hand.
Oh, does she want. The strength of it surprises her, nearly bowls her over and takes her right off her feet. She doesn't know what to do with it, jittery and uneasy. There's an ache between her scapulae, an itch that won't go away.
“Just—just say the word, and we can stop being friends. Or— we can go back to being strangers if that’s what you want. I won't say hi, or ask to hang out, or show up with Steve. We can pretend like nothing ever happened,” Robin continues, fast and jumbled, and she’s winding up for more, Nancy can tell, so Nancy very carefully places her fingers at Robin's wrist, just above where she leans her weight on her hand, watches her eyes go wide and dip down. Her pulse is hammering beneath her skin, quick as a hummingbird’s wings, and her skin is warm, nearly burning Nancy’s fingertips. Her lips are parted, low voice stuttering to a halt, and Nancy takes the chance to cut in.
“I don't mind, Robin,” she says emphatically, and she catches Robin's eyes he way back up with her own, imploring and calm. She needs Robin to know that she doesn't care—or that she, perhaps, cares too much. That an irrevocable shift has occurred behind her ribs, a great wave crashing in her abdomen, a stormy sea tossing about her insides. “I would never mind that. You can like whoever you want.”
“Oh.” And that's it. Robin's floundering, her wrist spasming in Nancy's grip. “Cool,” Robin says, and Nancy releases her forearm, watches Robin flex her fingers and look at her, really look, like she's trying to puzzle her out. Nancy feels heat crawl up her neck for some reason, a flush starting at the tips of her ears, and Robin glances at where Nancy knows her face is pink, blooming warm and hopeful beneath her skin. The air grows thick, tension bleeding in the centimeters she’s left between her hand and Robin’s, and Robin chews at the edge of her lower lip, like she’s processing, like she’s gearing up to say something.
“Ladies,” Eddie interjects, wedges himself between them to sling an arm over both their shoulders, and the moment's shattered, Nancy inhaling deep to ground herself again. It’s like an earthquake has shuddered through her, tectonic plates shifting, two halves never to touch again. “Steve said you guys weren't planning on swimming—and I said, that's crazy, man, ‘cause why else are we here?”
“Kinda’ sounds to me like Steve's asking to get dunked, huh?” Robin's voice is a little raspier, shaky, and Nancy can't look at her, a renewed blush starting at how throaty her voice sounds. Nancy focuses instead on trying to shrug Eddie's cold, wet arm off her shoulder. He doesn't budge.
“See, that's what I was thinking too,” Eddie drawls, cuts Nancy a mischievous glance. “Nancy?”
“Sure, Eddie,” Nancy says, a little mollified, because she can't process anything beyond Robin liking girls the way Nancy likes boys, and that maybe Nancy likes girls the same way Robin does. Quite possibly, she always had and had done her best to avoid that conclusion by focusing her attention on Steve, and then on Jonathan. There had been nothing wrong with them, and there still isn’t, but—she can’t help but feel she was using them, just a tiny amount, that she had known somewhere deep down that they weren’t really what she wanted. She had loved them, and still loves them now, but it had been…empty. Unfulfilling, perhaps, and she had keenly missed their friendship as soon as they had tried to branch into romantic territory.
Eddie whoops, victorious, disrupting the inner monologue she’d sent herself down, and he and Robin take off, Nancy almost able to see the dust clouds they kick up behind them. Robin sheds Steve’s shirt, a smattering of freckles across her shoulders and upper back like stars, matching the ones that dust her cheekbones, and Nancy needs to down the rest of her drink suddenly, swallowing against the vodka’s bite. It burns the whole journey into her belly, but she welcomes the distraction, focuses on citrus and sugar and booze instead of the wingtips of Robin’s shoulder blades, or the messy halo of her hair. She wants to trace the constellations mapped across Robin’s skin, bites her tongue against how that idea floods through her like a monsoon, pounding rain and streaking winds. Nancy trails after them much slower, stops when the water is close enough to rush over her ankles. It’s still bitterly frigid, not quite caught up to summer’s sudden appearance, and goosebumps crop up on her skin, Nancy wrapping her arms around herself. She stays there for a moment, takes in the image before her of her friends, her people, elated and glowing, as if they had never been weighted down by monsters and blood and death.
Eddie has Steve in a headlock, trying to push him beneath the waves, and Robin is crawling up Eddie’s back, scrabbling at his skin for purchase. Her weight sends them all toppling over, and Steve emerges first, sputtering, yelling something about his hair, about all the bacteria and muck that’s going to be stuck in it for weeks. Robin splashes him, then, laughing loud and with her head tossed back, nose scrunched up, and Nancy feels a pang in her chest, a tiny gap between beats. Steve stands there for a moment, dripping wet, and then he splashes her back, and now they’re both cascading water at each other like children, shouting and jeering. When Eddie winds up, arm cocked behind his head, Nancy should know better by now, should move out of the way—but she doesn’t, the lake water hitting her square in the chest, ice-cold, and she gasps, freezes where she stands. Everyone else goes still, expectant and waiting, Eddie’s face starting to edge towards nervousness, towards an apology, but before he can get there Nancy dips her arms beneath the water and heaves, sends a crest of water directly into his face. Eddie laughs, waterlogged and ragged, and Nancy grins wide and amused, free, and she’s brought into the fold like she had never left, shrieking as she dodges the ongoing sling of water and returns fire.
Steve works his way towards her, intent and refusing to be swayed by her attempts to splash away, and he picks her up easy as anything and tosses her, Nancy yelling and squirming in his grasp. She hits the deeper water, chilly and biting, and then Robin is there, arm snaking around her waist, pulling her up. Robin’s eyelashes are stuck together and water droplets cling to the ends of her bangs, pooling in the spaces above her clavicles, and Nancy doesn’t think she’s ever felt like this before, like Robin’s arm is going to sear right through her skin. She steals Nancy’s breath away, just like that, but she’s turning away to Steve, to Eddie, telling them to get some manners, for fuck’s sake, there’s a lady present, and Nancy centers herself as best she can.
“Who, me?” Eddie asks, tossing his hair over his shoulder, and the fight is renewed again, Robin letting go of Nancy to charge at him, and Nancy graciously bows out, tips onto her back and floats away from the elbows and the shoves they’re exchanging. She can’t get the smile off her face, can’t stop the amusement that keeps boiling over, and she halfway believes that she’s going to be sore tomorrow, her body unused to the feeling of keeping up positivity for so long. Silence rushes into her ears, the water lapping at her temples, and she’s comforted by the sounds of her friends continuing their antics, turns her head again to seek them out.
Her eyes meet Robin’s, cyan catching, and Robin’s mouth crooks in a little grin, the barest hint of teeth showing. Nancy feels herself go pink, drags her eyes away and back up to clouds, drifting and pearly-white. She breathes out steadily, slowly, wills the fluttery feeling in her stomach to go away before those butterflies make it any further up her throat.
Hours pass like that, boisterous and sunny and shining bright in her eyes, until the sun begins its descent down, cool and yellow behind the high line of the trees at the top of the quarry’s cliff face. Nancy wades out of the chilling water, turns at the beach to watch Steve and Eddie and Robin, dunking each other and scrapping around like kids. The horizon above the cliff is gradually purpling, pink shooting through beside blue, and she takes a deep breath, holds it in her lungs until it starts to burn. Their laughter is loud and carefree, and Nancy loves it—loves them, the feeling bubbling up her throat and tingling at the backs of her eyes.
Nancy adamantly doesn’t cry, but it’s a near thing, the gradually twinkling stars the only witness to the blurriness in her vision.
They filter out of the water slowly—Robin first, collapsing in a heap of limbs on the blanket laid out in front of Nancy’s car, trying to button the shirt again and giving up after a few seconds. She kicks her legs out in front of her, back curling to meet the ground, her eyes on the sky. Steve and Eddie follow soon after, Eddie leaning up against the door as Steve unlocks it, and he nearly collapses into the seat, immediately propping his feet up on the dash. Steve sighs loudly but doesn’t tell him to take his feet down. Nancy’s eyebrows go up where she stands at the open door of her car, elbows resting on the frame. That seems like it has meaning, quiet acceptance for a gesture Steve doesn’t extend to any old person, but it’s none of Nancy’s business. She doesn’t point it out, and she doesn’t ask why.
"I'm gonna’ take Eddie home." Steve points a thumb over his shoulder where Eddie is reclined in the front seat, eyelids heavy. His shirt is on the wrong way, head tipped back, but he manages a big smile in Nancy’s direction, fingers fluttering in a wave.
"What about Robin?" Nancy asks, even though she already knows what Steve is going to say.
"I think you two have a lot to talk about." He playfully ruffles her hair, Nancy swiping at him half-heartedly. His expression goes a little serious, then, and he pulls her into a hug, arms tight around her. Nancy's own come up around his back, fit comfortably in the space where his chest starts to narrow. Steve murmurs the next words into her hair, soft. "I'm really glad you came."
"Me, too," Nancy echoes, and she means it. Steve pulls away, expression once again clearing into a megawatt smile. It's the wide, overjoyed one she'd first fell in love with, and even though she loves him in a different way now, it still inspires the same warmth, the same reassurance that things were okay—or that they would be.
"And Nancy?"
"Yes, Steve?"
"Don't be scared. It's just Robin." And then he's breaking away from her, his car’s engine purring to life at the key twisting in the ignition. He pulls away, and she doesn't tell him that that's part of the problem—that it's just Robin. That it's Robin, with her messy hair and too-blue eyes and long, coltish legs. She’s laid out on the blanket, arms folded behind her head and face tipped to the stars, and Nancy shifts her weight back and forth, the day catching up with her like a rubber band snapping against her wrist. The conversations, the rolling of the earth beneath her feet, Robin’s eyes on hers and her wrist hot and thrumming in her hand—it’s lead her here.
She needs to be brave.
Her car easily croons to life, and Nancy turns the headlights off, presses buttons and flicks dials on the radio until something slow and lulling pours from the speakers, synth and a slow, pulsing beat rattling in her bones. She feels Robin glimpse at her but doesn’t confirm it, staying bent over in the safety of the cab for one breath, and then two, her chest stuttering like she’s incapable of getting enough oxygen. It’s only when she’s sure that Robin has gone back to watching the sky gradually darken over the tops of the trees that Nancy approaches, stepping quietly, and sits beside her. Robin doesn’t say anything, and neither does Nancy, silence falling that’s punctuated only by the water sloshing over the beach and her radio, thrumming and faraway.
She inhales, holds it, and stretches out beside Robin, places her head just underneath the bend of Robin’s elbow. Robin shifts, and Nancy feels a little pang, but she doesn’t move away from her; instead, it feels like she curls closer, just a touch, enough for Nancy to feel her arm brush her crown.
“Hey, Robin?” Nancy asks tentatively, rolls over onto her side so she’s facing the other girl. Robin’s eyes dart to her, quick and then gone again, back up to where the stars are just starting to twinkle. Her skin is washed coral by the press of dusk, shadows settling into the hollows beneath her eyes, the graceful slope of her neck. If she turned to face Nancy, their noses would nearly be touching, and Nancy has to put in real effort to not hold that image right up in front of her eyes, to not think what if?
“Yeah?” Robin sounds, and it’s little more than an acknowledging noise in the back of her throat, apprehensive and husky. The radio croons, comforting and predictable.
“How did you know?”
“Know what?”
“That you like girls.” Robin’s shoulders lift in a shrug, jerky and uneven. A low voice continues from the radio, steady as the tide, and Nancy counts the beats in her head as Robin twitches beside her, blowing a breath out that ruffles her bangs.
“I dunno’. I guess…I kind of always knew?” she murmurs, and there’s a tiny frown line between her eyebrows, lips pursed. Nancy wants to brush the tension out of her expression, thumb over Robin’s cheekbones. “My mom warned me about the things boys would try and my friends started talking about them wanting boys to try those things and it—it didn’t click for me. It wasn’t me,” she explains, slow and hushed, like she’s confessing a secret. Maybe she is, Nancy thinks. Robin removes one of her hands from beside her head, flips her palm towards her own face and holds it up to in front of the darkening sky to peer into the spaces between her fingers. “I kind of just ignored it, you know? Because what do you even do with information like that?” she asks, a little breathless, and Nancy doesn’t speak, allows Robin to work through the story on her own. “And then I started thinking about Tammy Thompson, always looking at the back of Steve’s stupid head. What it’d be like to hold her hand, or maybe…” she trails off, lips thinning as she searches for the conclusion. “I realized I didn’t like boys. At all.”
“I think,” Nancy starts, warm from the alcohol, warmed by Robin so close, her elbow just nudging the top of Nancy’s head, a hair’s breadth away. She thinks back to Barb pushing up her glasses and blushing prettily when Nancy would fix her hair, and she thinks about Robin inches away, with her high cheekbones and her freckled skin and the rings adorning her fingers. “I know what you mean,” she breathes, and Robin looks at her sharply, tips her head to face her, and it’s like the planets align, Robin blinking quick and unsteady as Nancy looks up at her through her lashes. Nancy can count the individual stars set on Robin’s face; thinks she can see constellations in the depths of her black, black pupils.
“Nancy,” Robin says, deep and edged rough, and her eyes are brilliantly blue, bright in the encroaching darkness. Nancy feels like she’s flying, like she’s floating up and out of her body, light as the air around them. “Do you—are you—”
“Yes,” Nancy answers easily, cutting off the question Robin doesn’t ask, as if her life isn’t tearing at the seams, as if the world isn’t shattering apart into something new, and unknown, and scary. She reaches out a hand, fingers curling towards her palm as she hesitates, and then rests it on Robin’s cheek. Her fingers fit soft and perfect on the cusp of Robin’s jaw, as if it was always meant to be there. Robin sucks a loud breath in through her teeth, eyelids fluttering, and Nancy—
Nancy takes the plunge, feet first, but it feels different. Like she’s making the right choice for the very first time.
She presses her lips to Robin’s, soft and unsure, feels Robin freeze up, her neck tense beneath Nancy’s fingers. But then she’s relaxing, mouth going pliant, lips parting, and when Nancy cautiously licks into Robin’s mouth, her tongue is still tart, citrus sweet from the lemonade. Robin makes a noise in the back of her throat, and then there are long fingers curling around Nancy’s nape, cool metal prickling at her flushed skin. Heat crawls up Nancy’s spine, her nape, and she wants to devour Robin, wants to crack open her ribs and climb inside her, until she’s destroyed any and all space that remains and there’s nothing left. Robin nips at her lower lip, teeth white and sharp, and Nancy’s fingers curl at her jaw, pads sliding up into Robin’s hair. The radio swells on a cool note behind them, wings unfurling beneath Nancy's breasbone, like she's about to take flight.
Robin exhales hard, breaking away to breathe, and Nancy chases her through the sudden distance, devours it whole when she slings a leg over Robin’s lap, settles comfortable and burning hot over Robin’s thighs. She secretly delights in being taller than the other girl, and Robin peers up at her, devotion in the blown-out edge of her pupils, reverence in her parted lips. Nancy sinks into her, hands curling into the collar of her shirt until it’s rumpled, stretched tight between her fingers as she pulls Robin into another blistering kiss. Nancy tastes sugar, undercut by the bitter burn of lemon and vodka, and the heat of Robin’s mouth goes right to her head, spinning like she’s just stepped off a rollercoaster. Robin’s hands slide up Nancy’s flanks, iron-hot, a brand seared into her flesh, and Nancy is sure she’s going to die, just a little bit, heat tugging low into her navel. She wants to stay here forever, pressed up against Robin in one long, scorching line, wants Robin's palms firm and warm on her ribs until the day she dies. Robin dips down, mouth skimming over the sharp jut of Nancy's jaw, tongue and teeth smoldering where she places open-mouthed kisses along the column of her throat, and when she bites down, nipping at pale skin, Nancy’s fingers tangle into her hair instead of just resting there, tugging gently—a warning.
Robin reads the cue, gentling immediately. For all her insisting about putting her foot in her mouth, or not understanding social cues, she reads Nancy like a book, attentive and focused. Robin brushes her thumbs over the ridge of Nancy’s hipbones, and Nancy sighs low and soft, throat bobbing when Robin presses a final kiss to her pulse point, shaky as a rabbit’s. Nancy's fingers slacken around her collar, and she smooths the fabric out carefully, catching Robin's throat flex around a swallow. She feels—
She feels peaceful, thrumming warm, like Nancy is herself for the first time. There are no expectations forced on her except her own, and her brain is quiet, amiable where it sits in her head. Her skin burns, nerves alight, but it's a pleasant heat, like the summer sun shining down on her earlier, glowing in her hair and turning Robin's freckles bright, a nebula over her cheekbones.
“Yeah?” Robin says, husky and inviting, and when she considers Nancy above her, she's a little spaced out, starry-eyed. Head in the clouds, Nancy's mother would say. Nancy smiles so wide it hurts, tips her forehead to rest against Robin’s. Her heart still slams around in her chest, and she likes that she can feel Robin’s thumping beside hers, erratic and rapid. Nancy wants, an ache clenching in her belly, but she has time. She doesn’t have to rush, agony no longer clawing at her heels.
“Yeah,” she echoes, loops her arms around Robin’s shoulders. Robin grins, a little shaky, and she tucks her face into Nancy’s neck, breathes what sounds like a disbelieving chuckle into flushed skin. Nancy doesn’t know what the future will bring, or what it will mean for them, but the fear of the unknown doesn’t seize around her heart like it usually would. She’s made it here despite her trepidation, what she’s been through, Robin in her arms beneath the stars.
The moon gradually lifts over the treetops, round and silver and watchful, and Nancy never wants to let Robin go.
(The next day, Steve asks her how it went, eyebrows waggling beneath the carefully arranged sweep of his bangs. He’s leaned over the counter, face propped in his hand, excited as a puppy with a new toy. Nancy sees Robin adjusting tapes on the shelves in the background, feels warmth blossom in her chest when she looks over her shoulder, staring at Nancy with nothing more than the barest curl to her lips—a smile reserved just for her.
Nancy doesn’t say a word.)