Chapter Text
Sunday
“Your pipsqueak is up to something.”
Steve doesn’t even have the grace to look up from his stack of tapes, the jerk. He’s next to the till with a notepad in front of him and a pencil between his teeth, which he talks around when he asks absently, “Which one?”
“Your little favorite,” Robin says, circling the counter to drop her bag behind it.
“Lucas?”
“Steve.”
“Ah, yeah, Max.” He holds up a video so she can see the cover from behind him, over his shoulder. “Fantasy or historical?”
“What? Fantasy, Steve, she turns into a bird.” Robin huffs. “And stop pretending you went and adopted one of the jocks.”
“That would have been more respectable of me, huh?” He gives up the act, sighs. Tucks the pencil behind his ear and turns around to look at Robin, leaning back against the counter with his hands on his hips. “What’d he do now?”
“He’s been asking me about,” she pauses for dramatic effect, “dates.”
“Shit, you too?”
“He already asked you?”
“Oh, yeah,” Steve says, overexaggerating the words with wide eyes and an exasperated head-roll of a nod. “Not the first time, but now he’s all detailed with best days and times and then why would you let Keith put you on late for Saturday like I disappoint him or something. Do you know,” and Robin is immediately certain that he’s about to say something she absolutely does know, “that he once wanted to be me? Not that I recommend that, but I’m just saying, I think I could use a little more respect.”
For the most part, Steve is just Steve, as far as Robin’s concerned. But every now and then she blinks and for just a moment he’s King Steve “The Hair” Harrington of Hawkins High, whining in his dorky little vest about how the nerdiest fifteen-year-old to ever grace that school’s halls doesn’t respect his dating advice, and Robin thinks the world is kind of an amazing place. “He didn’t like your answer, I take it?”
“Full rejection. Apparently I’m too boring,” Steve half turns to get back at his tapes, grabbing-stacking-tallying with more force than necessary. “Me! Boring!”
“What’d you say?”
“You first.”
Robin boosts herself up to sit on the counter by the phone, sending at least one loose receipt skittering. She glances apathetically over the far edge where it flutters to the floor, then turns back to Steve. “Stargazing.”
“Stargazing?!” The level of affront absolutely does not match the severity of the situation, and Robin thinks for neither the first nor the last time that her best friend is a touch overdramatic. “And he didn’t give you shit about that!?”
He didn’t. Dustin had insisted on an opinion from a girl, not just any girl but an older girl, and when she’d tried to recommend asking Nancy he’d rejected it so viciously that Robin had given in, though not without a fair amount of as-yet-unsatisfied suspicion. But she had given in, and before she’d answered she’d laid back in the wildflowers on a now-too-familiar hill at the outskirts of town, and against her better judgment she had taken a beat to let herself imagine. And by imagine, she means pretend.
Here is what she’d pretended: that the wind on her face was the soft evening kind, and in a second she would open her eyes and she wouldn’t see a fifteen year old nerd and an oblivious military encampment and a towering stormcloud of death she’s supposed to be watching despite it’s refusal to do anything but loom ominously, but a cool, quiet moon, a sky dotted glittery-bright and to her left a spray of dark curls fanned out beneath their shine. And then there were clear blue eyes there, too, twinkling-warm, and a soft mouth and a sharp chin and slight fingers, just a breath - of time and of space - from entwining with Robin’s. Frozen along with any wry, efficient, brave words that might spill from that mouth, because for as long as Robin could hold it all frozen, could let herself live in the moment before, she could almost believe it was there, that it was real, that it simply hadn’t happened yet. But it wasn’t real, and she was technically on watch duty, so. She’d opened her eyes.
It’d fucking sucked.
She hadn’t told Dustin Henderson all that, of course. Just that she’d want stars, and when Dustin waved at the storm that had been stationed at the edge of Hawkins for months now and asked how she could stand the dark, she’d told him that if she’s talking about her perfect date then it would be with someone who makes her feel safe, right? And he’d liked that, had grinned at her like she’d gotten something right and hadn’t given her any shit in the least.
She hadn’t told Dustin any more, but she wants to tell Steve, is the thing. Right down to the details. The desire to do so is a different sort of longing; less like a chest wound and more like a migraine, and for a second she thinks that when she opens her mouth it’s going to come out like some kind of reverse painkiller, Tylenol that you gotta spit out to get to work.
“Steve,” she condescends instead, kicking her legs. “You said dinner and a movie.”
“You don’t know that!” he protests. She gives him a look. “It’s not boring,” he whines, “it’s a classic.”
She raises her eyebrow. “Is it still a classic when you take them all to the same dinner?”
“The movie changes."
“Sometimes."
He flashes her a grin. It’s a testament, really, to how little he gives a shit about it, that he doesn’t even attempt to defend himself. Like, he’s not even ashamed that he isn’t trying, which in turn makes her think about what it would take to make him want to try, which in turn makes her think of Nancy.
She spends too much stupid time, these days, thinking about Nancy.
A sudden need to occupy herself has Robin jumping down and traipsing over to the returns bin. All that turns up is a measly one tape - The Wizard of Oz, hell yeah - which in turn makes her ask, “We get anyone at all today?”
“Actually, yes!” Steve announces, pleased. “Three! Mrs. Click spent a solid ten minutes telling me about the size of her tomatoes - oh, ew, don’t look at me like that, real tomatoes, Robin - and then another five on how she thinks this strange weather lately might actually be helping her herb garden.”
“Really?” Robin knows she’s making a face. “Wow. Everyone sticking around really is just going about their business, huh?”
Steve gestures to their pitifully empty yet nonetheless exceedingly, uh, lived in place of employ, right down to the crumpled receipt she’s resolutely left on the ground by the counter. “Rob, we’re going about our business.”
“Steve, we’re lying to the United States Military while we sneak around taking shifts sitting on a hill staring at a,” she shakes the tape at him, “tornado of death in case it stops doing nothing and decides to take us all away to evil munchkinland.”
He shakes his head and snatches it out of her hand, tossing it on one of his piles as if he doesn’t care that they have to check it in. “Who were you on with today, anyway?” he asks.
“Dustin.”
“Aah,” he draws out the word, connecting the dots. He huffs. “Huh. He usually puts himself on with Munson; I think he’s trying to wheedle out shit about the campaign.” It’s grumpy in the way Steve gets when he’s jealous, which is kind of cute, even if it’s ridiculous. Eddie just died. Sure, he came back, but of course Dustin’s gonna play favorites for a while, after that.
Speaking of which, “I’m actually on with Eddie later this week,” Robin notes.
“What?” Steve looks even grumpier. “Why do I never—“ he cuts himself off, huffs again. Then asks, “You wanna switch?”
She eyes him, wary, “Why? Who you got?”
Steve opens his mouth, then closes it. Then he says, “Nance,” and Robin’s stomach jolts.
“What’s wrong with Nance?” Robin asks, and it maybe comes out more combative than she’d like.
“Nothing!” he insists quickly. He tries to emphasize it with his arms and knocks over half a dozen tapes in the process, which is further proof if she didn’t already notice he was flustered. Which she did, because he’s stumbling as much over his words as he is over the videos and his eyes are skittering like a nervous rabbit. “Nothing at all, absolutely no reason. Nancy’s great! I just, I want— I mean, I figure she’d want some, uh. Girl time? Yeah, that’s it, girl time, but really, no one I’d rather— Did you do inventory? Of course you didn’t, you just got here, I’m going to do inventory.”
He knocks over two more tapes as he walks by and doesn’t stop to pick them up, though he does shout his apologies profusely while he slides into the back room. Robin barely notices, because she’s busy with the way that her stomach has only stopped jolting because it’s fallen out into a hollow pit that doesn’t really have anything in it to jolt anymore. The lady doth protest too much, she thinks.
She’d say it aloud, too, under normal circumstances. Under normal circumstances, she’d follow him into the back room with a shit-eating grin and heckle until he admitted it, that Nancy Wheeler still makes him nervous and stupid and even inclined to turn tail on a hellwatch shift because he knows it. Robin would bug him all about how she heard him, on their drive off to War Zone and then again when they were in the Upside Down - no, she’d already have told him those things, weeks ago; they’d already be used to her ribbing him on this one, alongside reminding him that he’s got this, and she’s not with Jonathan anymore, right?, and your time to shine, hair-boy. She’d have no problem - nay, much glee - ordering him to quit whining, take the shift and screw up his courage and grab that bull by the horns, or, more aptly, that girl by the perm, provided Nancy Wheeler likes that kind of thing.
Oh, oh dear. There’s a breathless, mind-numbing thought. Does Nancy Wheeler like that kind of thing?
Steve would know.
Shit. Steve would definitely know.
And Robin wants so bad to know, too. Even if that is weird as hell. But no, here she is and it’s Tammy Thompson all over again, except this time Robin is looking at the girl and the girl is looking at Steve and Steve still has stupid hair and gets crumbs everywhere but also Robin has to be like actually, fair enough, because she thinks he’s the best and she wants him to be happy all the goddamn time.
Which isn’t what has her panicky now. Or, it is, but it isn’t. What’s got her freaked is that it’s not the first time this has happened, or the second, or the third or the fourth or the fifth. What’s got her freaked is the thought that maybe these are normal circumstances now, that after the first normal of having no one to talk to and the second normal of having Steve to talk to, there might be this third normal where she has Steve and horribly, terribly can’t talk to him. It is, she decides, the worst thing that has ever been.
Then she remembers there are bone-crunching mindfuck murder-demons out there, and decides Steve’s drama must be catching. So she shouts, “You suck, you know that, right?,” and goes to pick up all eight fallen video tapes and that one downed receipt.
Monday
Dates are a thing this week, apparently. It will be over twenty four hours before Robin makes that connection, but that’s just because when Lucas (and Mike and El, but mostly Lucas) turns up at her Monday evening shift, he manages to make it entirely about himself and Max.
“Dustin says a movie’s boring, though,” he complains. And they’re in a video store, okay? It’s a fair enough discussion.
Robin is midway through something of her own performance. It’s a good one, and - look, they all want Max and Lucas to have a good time of it, okay? They’ve been through a lot. So, “Sure, with that attitude,” Robin tells him, then waves her hands all scene-setting like she’s Eddie running a game, “But think of this: it’s late in the evening. You’re still damp from the lake—”
“The lake?”
“Yeah, the lake, Sinclair. Take her to the lake.”
“Really?” Mike asks, perplexed. “Even after all that stuff at Lover’s—”
“Or the pool, sure, whatever,” Robin cuts him off. “Less screaming children at the lake, but I guess the pool is pretty quiet this year, anyway.” Everywhere is quiet this year. Lucas and Mike and El are all staring at her, so she defends, “Look, water is sexy!”
“...water is sexy?” El questions, brow furrowed.
An unbidden fantasy of dark wet curls and long bare legs places itself delicately on the video store countertop, biting its lip and tipping its head as imagined droplets plop onto a stack of receipts. A cluster slides down the line of a pale throat as pink lips open to chorus silently along with a dry-mouthed Robin, “Yeah, water is sexy.”
“Hmph,” El accepts, like she’s noting a point to verify later.
Robin clears her throat, gently pushing dream-Nancy to the side for later. “Anyway, yeah, you’re inside now and all dried off and cozy, so you put on the film - something you’ve already seen, of course—”
“Hold up,” Mike interrupts. “Something you’ve already seen? Why would you do that?”
Robin looks at him. She raises her eyebrows. Eventually, there’s a long, dawning, “Oooh.”
“Uh-huh,” Robin says, smug.
“I do not understand,” El says.
Mike leans over to whisper furiously to her, comically red. Her mouth morphs into a little O of understanding, and then a calculated, thoughtful look that has Robin slightly concerned.
“I think you can guess the rest,” Robin says, because anything more would conjure dream-Nancy back from the pool to Robin’s couch, head thrown back in a laugh as she sprawls across it like she belongs there, legs crowding into Robin’s— whoops, yeah, there she is, fully realized in intricate detail right at the forefront of Robin’s uncontrollable stupid brain, and just - god, please.
“So…what would you pick?”
“Hmm?”
“For a movie?”
“Oh. I don’t know.” She’s a little preoccupied. And then, at their expectant stares, ”It doesn’t really matter, right? The movie’s not the point. Something you want to watch but not that bad, you know?”
“Sure,” Mike says. “Okay, sure.”
They sit silently for a moment. There’s a bit of furious whispering between Lucas and El that Robin pointedly ignores out of courtesy, before El asks sweetly, “What movies have you been watching?”
As this is also a perfectly reasonable question to ask in the middle of a video store, Robin rattles off a list that has them all nodding along until she hits on one she hasn’t been watching so much as keeps meaning to rent (again). It raises questions.
“Doctor Ji-what?”
“Is that anything like Frankenstein?”
“Wait, why haven’t you?”
“Never got around to it. Me and Steve were all set to watch it, and then, you know,” she waves dramatically out the window at the sparsely populated streets. When she turns them back, the trio is exchanging a heavy glance.
She’s about to ask what, exactly, is going on in their little nerd brains, but she’s beaten out by Lucas. His eyes are narrowed. “Depressing,” He accuses.
Robin cocks her head at him. El and Mike appear equally thrown.
“Sinclair!” Robin decides she’s delighted. “Look at those depths!”
“Look, uh, um. Erica! Erica watches some weird—“
Mike is not accepting that. “Dude, Erica’s eleven.”
“So?”
“Should’ve blamed your mom.”
“I’m not—“
“Hush hush hush. Hush children.” They all glare at Robin. “Whichever member of the Sinclair family is responsible for dear Lucas’ cultural acumen, we should thank them.”
Everyone grumbles about that, including Lucas, whose grumbling morphs into a petulant, “It is depressing, though.” Robin makes an eh noise, and he continues, “And two tapes. Not great if the plan is to get…distracted,” he looks simultaneously fascinated and like he’d like the ground to - oh, ouch, nope, bad metaphor. Like he’d like to disappear, no earth-portal-opening required.
Anyway, Robin didn’t realize they were still on this topic, but - sure. Sure, she’ll bite. It’s a challenge, now.
“Au contraire, mon ami,” she says, then puts on a voice, “oh, goodness, looks like we got all distracted and never changed the tape.” She plants her hands on her own cheeks dramatically, “Nothing for it, we’ll just have to do this again, really concentrate next time.” She claps them together under her chin, fluttering eyelashes.
This gets her a chorus of impressed noises, which are stellar for her ego even if she’s pretty sure this is just an easy crowd. She sketches out a little bow. Ladykiller Robin Buckley, at your service, she doesn’t say, though it’s a close thing before she stops herself. Hypothetical ladykiller, anyway. Really, really hypothetical.
It all wraps up quick, after that, though Lucas continues to question Robin for a small while on restaurants and candles and even wine - she does hold the line there, thanks, she forgets how old this one is but it’s like sixteen at maximum, which is definitely too young for that shit, never mind that Robin is still a few years out from legal herself - and it’s great because Max deserves it. And, okay, maybe Robin gets into it a little, too, enough to wax chatterbox-ineloquent while Lucas listens avidly and the other two disappear into the shelves, because this is the kind of thing Robin isn’t going to get, right? Maybe a night out below the stars, a dip - or skinny-dip, if she’s really lucky - in the lake, a movie and make-out combo, sure, but this? The pomp and the circumstance, a table at Enzo’s, holding hands and sneaking kisses across a candlelit dinner and then pressing Nancy Wheeler - because it can’t happen, right? So it might as well be Nancy Wheeler - up against her car because they can’t even make it home.
She keeps her pronouns straight - heh, straight - by force of will and habit, but her head is spinning by the time the trio leaves, chattering furtively amongst themselves. And she’s feeling a bit emotional, a bit stupid, a bit reckless, even - a private variety of reckless - and a bit like a masochist-idiot-stupidhead, so she gives in to the urge to stop by the Award Winning Films section before she closes up. She’s not actually that surprised when she can’t get what she wants.
Tuesday
Because she is a masochist-idiot-stupidhead, the next night she goes to Nancy’s.
It’s not, like, spur of the moment. It’s a whole pre-planned thing, and no, Robin has not been screaming into her pillow and choking on her own breath and opening her mouth to gush to Steve before she cuts off with a squeak and finds something to make fun of him for before he notices - and, really, if this is going to become a thing (it’s already a thing) she’s going to have to find someone to confide in who isn’t Steve and hasn’t dated Nancy Wheeler and isn’t possibly-probably still in love with Nancy Wheeler. But that involves a whole lot of logistics, like, y’know, sussing out someone who would be cool with the kissing of girls (as performed by Robin, unfortunately at a still-undetermined future date) and who wouldn’t make fun of her for being an inexperienced nervous wreck and who would cheer her on when he knows she has a crush and would share his own shit like she’s the first person he wants to tell and would drive extra slow to make sure she doesn’t screw up her mascara and be Steve, okay, she just wants to tell Steve. But she doesn’t. Because. Aforementioned reasons.
The result is that he doesn’t even know that she’s seeing Nancy - not seeing seeing, just seeing, and gosh but she’s pretty to see - which somehow feels like more of a betrayal than anything, and Robin kind of wants to die. And then there’s Nancy Wheeler, standing in the doorway in a tucked-in short-sleeve and jeans, and Robin really wants to die because she’s not entirely sure how she can be expected to live while Nancy’s collarbone insists on jutting its way out of the scoop neck and into a very precise and specific fantasy where Robin gets to lick it.
“You coming in?” Nancy asks.
Which is when Robin realizes that she is, in fact, still on the doorstep.
She comes in.
“I brought an offering,” she says, flashing the VHS in her hand. She has absolutely no idea what her arms are doing, except that it’s broad and inarticulate. “I was going to bring a different one, but I couldn’t find it, which is weird, you know? Because I didn’t actually think we’d rented that one out and the system says we didn’t - I checked - but it’s still not there, so either we have a ghost or we put it down somewhere random in the whole,” she lowers her voice, “Vecna ordeal - I didn’t have to whisper that, did I? It’s not like anyone knows what I’m talking about, except now I’ve said that, which would make someone question what I’m talking about. Not that anyone else is here right now, obviously. Anyway, my money’s on the ghost this time, because have you seen the bathrooms at the store? Someone definitely died in there, it just has that feeling, y’know - actually, you could know, what with all your books and research and would you please save me from myself here?”
It’s a plea. Robin is not above pleading.
“Absolutely not,” Nancy Wheeler says immediately. She’s leaning against the wall with her arms crossed over her chest, the picture of casual conviction, and she’s so pretty and looks so fond that Robin wants to scream.
“You know, you used to get annoyed when I got like this,” Robin says instead of doing the screaming, and really she thinks she deserves a medal for it. Nancy opens her mouth to protest, but Robin insists, “Don’t argue, I remember that library trip, you definitely wanted to strangle me.”
Nancy has the - glorious, awful, terrible - decency to look rueful before she shrugs. “What can I say?” A smile plays around her mouth. “Turns out you’re not all talk.”
And Robin has no goddamn idea what to do with that. What is she supposed to do with that? She cannot do anything with that. Not without imploding. Which would be bad, because then she wouldn’t be around to smile back when Nancy Wheeler smiles at her and also Nancy would probably be covered in Robin-guts, which seems like a traumatizing prospect.
“I’m a lot of talk,” she points out.
“It’s cute,” Nancy says, and Robin’s not sure she’s going to get a choice in the whole implosion matter. “C’mon. I’m in the kitchen.”
She grabs Robin’s hand to tow her inside. She doesn’t need to, because Robin would follow her anywhere, but her fingers curl just so and her palm is soft, warm in Robin’s grip, fingernails a touch ragged like she hasn’t had time to neaten them but thinks it’s okay for Robin to see her less than pristine, and Robin has absolutely no business ascending to another plane of existence over it but she’s going to anyway.
In the kitchen means icing cupcakes, apparently, because there are about three cooling racks’ worth on the counters and two bowls full of what appears to be homemade icing, because of course it is. Nancy bypasses all of it to a thick wood cutting board further down the counter, where she’s slicing the stems off what appears to be a bouquet of rather pathetic-looking petunias.
“What’s the occasion?” Robin asks, peering into bowls of thick, creamy blue and green. It smells like heaven and the countertops are so damn neat, ingredients lined up in meticulous rows and none of the flour-sugar-mess that always seems to dust up when Robin tries to do anything kitchen-wise.
Nancy shrugs. “No occasion. I’ve been baking.” She says it quickly, with that defensive jut of her chin that just asks for a fight. Robin is transfixed by her hands, sure and steady on the long knife she’s using for the flowers, and god what Robin would give to be the wood of that handle or even the greenery, really. She’s gone enough not to care. Stick me on your cutting board and chop me to bits, she thinks, and then thinks, what the fuck.
She distracts herself by inspecting a cupcake - this one is iced already, blue, with a perfect dome of yellow cake under it. “They’re very you,” she says.
“Right,” Nancy says, and oh dear, it’s a little sharp. “Cupcakes and flowers, just what you’d expect from good girl Nancy Wheeler.” The sound of her chopping comes harsher, with a bit of a thud to it, and Robin thinks you really don’t need that level of force to slice through a stem. “I keep thinking those assholes from the Post would have a field day with…” Nancy trails off, jaw clenching as she segues into an agitated sound.
“Hey, don’t abuse the petunias,” Robin says. Nancy doesn’t seem to be listening, tight grip now less sexy than it is concerning, and Robin doesn’t think twice before she sidles forward to place her unoccupied palm overtop Nancy’s wrist. That does make Nancy stop, her hand stilling and her eyes flickering to Robin’s, and it’s funny because what keeps Robin going is the physical fact of Nancy’s skin but also the memory of it, the real uncertainty in her right-now gaze but also the memory of her confidence when she’d stood in the doorway to hell and told Robin okay, you got this. “I didn’t mean that,” Robin says softly, because she didn’t. She tries to explain. “I mean, it’s all very…precise, right? I’m a throw it all in the pot kind of girl, personally, I never put the liquids in the solids or the other way around or however you’re supposed to do it.”
Nancy gives an exhale that might aspire to be a laugh one day when it grows up, and Robin is very concentrated on trying to say something, here, but a small part of her is just free enough to think, damn you. Damn you, Nancy Wheeler, who doesn't even have to try to make Robin feel like she can do anything at all. Robin needs her to get that, that, “You - you like to put it together, right? Just right. All the right measurements and the right temperatures and the right timing. It's the same way you do everything else. You don’t leave anything to chance,” ready-aim-fire, Robin thinks, seeing a battleworn version of Nancy Wheeler superimposed on the soft Tuesday-evening one in front of her when she explains, “and that means when it comes out…good…it’s not even a little bit of luck. It’s all just…you.”
Nancy is staring at her. At her hand, specifically; she’s stopped cutting and gone completely still and she’s got those incisive blue eyes except they’re looking a little glazed and she’s staring at Robin’s hand and it makes Robin realize that maybe she’s overdone it, gone too serious too fast because hell, she’s barely walked in the door, hasn’t she? So she snatches her hand away, already mourning the warmth of Nancy’s skin, but that just has Nancy shifting to look at Robin’s face, instead, that same glazed-shocky expression now meeting Robin’s eyes, and when Robin can’t take it anymore she finally says, “Uh…Nance?”
“I don’t even like petunias,” Nancy murmurs all at once, head moving in small helpless shakes, and oh - oh she’s blushing. Robin wants to die again, in a good way. “I mean, I think abusing them is fine, is all. They’re ugly.”
Robin props her hip up against the counter. She recognizes, objectively, that she’s crowding Nancy in. “What idiot boy got you petunias?” She asks, mostly to remind herself that she is not allowed to be an idiot boy who gets Nancy Wheeler petunias. Or not-petunias. Whatever she wants.
“Not a boy,” Nancy says, and Robin has no business being pleased about it. “Mrs. James from down the street is still in town; brought them for the house, she said. As if hers don’t look half-dead all the time. It’s— I usually get peonies, from the market? They’re so big and lively and pink and they make me remember that stupid stormcloud hasn't gotten them yet,” she’s not looking at Robin anymore, just at the flowers, fingers fidgeting and mouth rambling, which is absolutely buckwild because Nancy never fidgets and rambles even less, “but the last batch was basically dead and I cannot stand dead flowers anymore, I can’t, so I threw them out but I didn’t have time for the store so the vase was empty when Mrs. James came by and she saw so now I have to put these out, and—”
“Nance?” Robin interrupts, concerned. Wants to touch her again. Doesn’t.
“Thanks,” Nancy says. It’s so quick that it might be part of the same stream of thought she’d been carrying on about flowers, but it’s clearly not. She looks up at Robin, and Robin is caught in it, in the deep, quiet breath that goes through all of Nancy when she says again, “Thanks. You’re…” A trail off, and then once more: “Thanks.”
God, they’re close. They’re so close. Robin could hug her, it wouldn’t be weird, girls do that all the time, right? But god, she shouldn’t. She can’t. God. Nancy wants her to though, probably, maybe, and why isn’t Nancy hugging her, huh? And Robin doesn’t know what to do, with her limbs or her mouth or her hands or her heart, so she kind of goes on autopilot and—
—stuffs the cupcake she’s still holding in her mouth.
Too much. Like, way too much. “Shit,” she tries to say, but it comes out more as a mouthful of gibberish, and she’s pretty sure she loses some crumbs as she does and she’s gross, ugh, she covers her hand with her mouth and the cake is good but the icing is actually weirdly grainy and her lips are probably all blue now and Nancy must think she’s disgusting, an absolute heathen of a terrible guest, about to kick her out of the house and maybe even the town, except that Nancy isn’t going to do that at all because she’s giggling her pretty permed head off.
God but she’s pretty.
She laughs pretty, too.
“You’re a mess,” Nancy says between chuckles. “You run like a goof and you eat like a slob, how do you even survive?”
It should be mean, but there’s so much fondness to the way she says it that it makes Robin feel like she’s glowing instead. “I—” she tries to start, but her mouth is too full and it comes out too mushy, which is good, because she’s pretty sure the rest was going to be love you. She claps her hand over her mouth, and by the time she’s survived the eons long process of awkwardly chewing and swallowing with Nancy Wheeler smiling at her from an inch away, she’s collected herself enough to say, “I do a mean trumpet solo,” instead. She points dramatically with the half-eaten cupcake, “And just you wait; the next round of monsters are gonna speak nothing but Italian, and then who’ll be laughing?”
Nancy braces her own hip against the table, fully facing Robin. “You speak Italian?”
“And a few other languages, yeah. It was kind of my thing, in school.” Robin can’t help swaying a little forward, catching how Nancy smells like flowers and sugar. There’s a touch of brimstone there, too, from the stove maybe, and it conjures the sense memories of gunpowder and alcohol, flashlights and library books that are all precisely equal in their Nancyness, because Nancy is everything all at once and can be anything she wants to be and also is just a tired girl standing very close in the kitchen, and Robin is thoroughly intoxicated with every bit of her.
Every bit of her which seems to be getting closer, maybe. Unclear. Robin could swear Nancy is swaying forward too, is all, though that’s probably in her head. “A few?” Nancy is asking, and the lowness of it derails any and all of Robin’s thoughts. “How many are a few?”
“…three?” Nancy has very nice eyelashes. Long. Spiky.
Nancy lets out a surprised huff of breath; she’s close enough that Robin feels it at her neck. “You speak four languages?!” She sounds a little airy.
“Mhm.” Robin’s delighted to impress. She smiles into the place between them, feeling the heat from where Nancy’s hip is planted directly by the hand Robin has hand braced at the edge of the counter. She adds, because it seems the thing to do. “Oh, and a little Russian, now. Steve may have mentioned that.”
Steve.
Robin hasn’t thought about Steve, not since she crossed the threshold into this house. She’s a terrible fucking friend.
She steps back, and regrets it immediately. But then, she also regrets how close she’d been. Oh, she doesn’t know.
“Uh, Steve. About Steve,” she says.
“Steve.” Nancy says it flatly, and Robin realizes that something has shifted, here. A moment that the universe had snuck her under the table is gone, and she's the one who fumbled it until it shattered. Which is fine, it's fine; she's pretty sure it was never hers to have in the first place.
So: “Steve.” Robin repeats. “Have you, uh. Have you…talked. To Steve?”
“Not really,” Nancy says, searching Robin’s face and looking something like sad. It occurs to Robin that it must be much easier to invite over a new friend to hang out than an ex-boyfriend, and with a pang she wonders if Nancy wishes she were Steve. Nancy turns back to her flower-chopping endeavors, and Robin misses the solidity of her immediately. Nancy asks, “Why?”
Right. Right, here we go. C’mon, Buckley, this is the guy who stalks the video returns of the pretty girls he knows you like; you owe him this. “It’s just, he’s, uh…really good! At, uh…” not languages. Not trumpet, let alone anything musical, and Robin has exactly zero knowledge of his relationship to the art of cupcake-baking, and - this is ridiculous, it is, this is her best friend and she respects his skills in the many things she knows he’s amazing at but right now all she can think of is top tier friend moves unlike me and the set of Nancy Wheeler’s lips, “...things. Many things.”
Smoooooth like butter. After it has been in the fridge. Because some people put butter in their fridge, and then it isn’t smooth at all.
Nancy sighs through her nose. “Well,” she says, “what do you want to ask?”
What? “What?”
“About Steve,” Nancy says. “Mike was asking about him earlier. What he likes on dates.” And oh, shit, Robin thinks, having an epiphany. Unaware of the connect-the-dots game going on beside her, Nancy continues, “Which means Mike thinks he’s helping, and I know you’ve been playing with them, Wednesdays, so I figured if he knows something…” she trails off.
Then you would know, Buckley, spending so much time with him and all.
That’s not how Nancy would say it, of course. But it seems pretty clear to Robin where this is going, and Robin has to look away, picking at the cupcake in her hand with undue concentration. It’s like the most fucked up multiple choice test ever, the way Nancy trails off: in the space below, tell the girl you’re in love with who her ex-boyfriend she’s hung up on is into these days. And the kicker is, if Robin were a good friend - if she were the best friend, to both of them, the way she wants to be - she’d say don’t worry, Nancy, it’s you. This is all about you.
“You know,” Nancy adds at Robin’s uncharacteristic silence, and her mouth is tugged down at the corners which Robin hates, “it’s not some betrayal, to tell me. If—”
“Is this icing weird on purpose?” Robin interrupts, because no, actually, she can’t do this. She can’t do this at all, and she’s going to hate herself for it but that doesn’t mean she can do this because she can’t.
Instead, she’s just going to insult Nancy’s baking. Great. Score for Robin Buckley, really knocking it out of the park tonight.
“You don’t like my icing?”
It’s a mercy move. Robin knows it, Nancy knows Robin knows it, and Robin knows Nancy knows Robin knows it. She looks disappointed - Nancy does - and sad again, and Robin knows that isn’t about the icing and hates that she has no way to explain that the way she wants to betray Steve isn’t just some shared idle gossip, nothing that simple, that sweet.
“Uh…”
“I’ll have to find a new recipe,” Nancy says. “You can come back over to try it.”
“Okay,” Robin squeaks.
Things are good after that, but not - not as good as they could be, the whole situation sitting like an aftertaste in the back of Robin’s mouth, sickly-sweet and poorly textured. Because Robin gets it now: that slight disappointment at the edge of Nancy’s gaze, and Lucas and Mike and El at the store, and - most terribly of all - exactly what Dustin Henderson is trying to do.