Work Text:
It is the east, and Juliet is the sun!—
Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon,
Who is already sick and pale with grief
The first time Robin Buckley met Nancy Wheeler was in seventh grade history class. She would never forget that day, but it wouldn't be ‘til 16 that Robin would realize just why that day remained burned in her memory.
Nancy Wheeler had shown up to the first day of seventh grade looking pretty and doe-eyed, clutching new school supplies that Robin couldn't pay attention to over the smell of her perfume. She remembered the purple backpack, though. 'Nancy Wheeler' scribbled under the handle in childlike cursive attempts that Robin would trace with her finger mid air until the Wheeler girl's name became muscle memory.
Robin remembered searching the halls for her in between classes, the chaos hard to sort through, and with the difference in last names came their separate-continent lockers. Not that Nancy Wheeler really cared what Robin thought of her, but oh did Robin care.
She sat next to Nancy that year. They had drawn numbers to assign their seats, and the universe saw fit to place them side by side. Never had Robin been more grateful.
Every day, Robin would ask to borrow a pencil. Nancy Wheeler had perfect, sharp, wooden pencils lined up in a row in a metal pencil case, and a kind heart to give more than she would ever take.
Every day, Robin would hide her own bitten and dull pencils in the bottom of her backpack, come up empty, and Nancy would place a pencil on her desk with the biggest grin.
What Robin didn't know, is that Nancy knew Robin had her own pencils. She just liked the smile on Robin's face.
When Robin really notices Nancy Wheeler, she is clutching a copy of A Room with a View , and she looks lost in Family Video. Robin knew this place like the back of her hand, now that she was 14 and allowed to be in town by herself. She watches her, sick with piety at the altar of Nancy Wheeler, determined that this time will be enough.
Before she can overthink it, Robin steps forward. calls out "Nancy?" and winces, just her first name not the intended call.
Nancy looks surprised, but turns to her. "Yes?" Robin melts just a little watching the other girl cock her head to the side.
"Do you need help?" Robin gestures vaguely to the rest of the store behind them.
Nancy blushes a pale pink, hurriedly assuring, "No…I mean yes. You're Robin Buckley, right? You're in band." She said it not like a question, but more than a statement. If Robin didn't know any better, she might've said Nancy was nervous.
"Yes. I am. Robin Buckley! And in band. Both. I'm both. Anyways, I'm in here all the time so I know where everything is."
"I'm looking for The Outsiders ? My brother has to write a report on the book, and I thought he might like the movie."
Robin lights up, leading Nancy down the winding shelves of Family Video. "Oh! That's back here. You know, I thought the movie was really close to the book, actually, but I don't understand why everyone loves Dally so much. He's just a boy. The book was good, but there's just something about seeing it come to life, you know? and-" they get to the shelf, and Robin realizes through her rambling, Nancy hasn't said anything, and blushes a deep scarlet. "Sorry," she mutters, not really meeting Nancy's eyes.
Nancy smiles the softest that Robin has ever seen, and shakes her head. "No, no, it's okay. Thank you." She leans forward to grab the tape off of the shelf, and tips her head towards Robin.
Robin toes her converse into the carpet, too deeply aware of how Nancy looks right now. "Well. I'll see you at school?" Hopefully, Robin thinks, she'll want to see me.
Nancy's eyes widen, and she smiles a bit bigger. "Yeah. Yeah, maybe. See you at school, Robin Buckley." Nancy walks away, stopping to rent the tape from some teenager behind the counter, and Robin swears she skips out of the store, skirt swishing around her knees.
Robin is leaning with her chin on the shelf in front of her, watching Nancy walk away through the glass when she remembers Steve came with her and whirls around to find him staring at her.
He points through the door, a little dumbfounded. "Was that Nancy Wheeler?" Robin feels that burn return to her cheeks as she crosses her arms, a little too defensively.
She sighs. "Yes, yes it was." As Steve opens his mouth to remind Robin of her hopeless little crush on Nancy Wheeler, she shushes him loudly and takes A Room with a View to the front desk to rent.
See, how she leans her cheek upon her hand!
O, that I were a glove upon that hand,
That I might touch that cheek!
Robin was with Steve when she realized she loved Nancy Wheeler. Tucked away in a hallway corner, watching to see if Nancy would read the apology note Steve left.
Steve is staring, arms crossed over his chest and faced tucked into a frown. Robin thinks it's a little creepy, but all she says is, "She's not going to read it out here, dingus. She'll wait ‘til she gets home."
"You don't know that." Steve groans, throwing his head back against the locker.
She stifles a laugh and elbows him, hard. "What if she never reads it, Steve? I wouldn't."
"Hey, you're supposed to be on my side!" Mock outrage fills Steve's voice, hand clutching his chest dramatically. Robin laughs, but directs her attention back to Nancy, who is talking to Jonathan Byers at her locker, pointedly ignoring the folded note resting on her books inside.
She notes the other girl’s hair, meaning to point out to Steve that it's shorter, now, but instead what comes out is, "Not when it comes to Nancy, I'm not."
Steve leans up from his stance against his own locker, turning a bemused expression to Robin. "What does that mean?"
Robin laughs a little too loudly, swiping her hand across her chest in dismissal. "Nothing." When he clearly doesn't believe her, she socks him in the arm, shouting "Nothing, dingus!" and as he winces, Nancy looks over.
Nancy looks over, and Robin feels her mouth go dry, as the other girl lifts a small wave and an even smaller smile to her.
She lifts her hand back, not quite a wave but closer to an overeager classmate vying for attention, or perhaps just recognition.
She wouldn't know to call this love, yet.
Did my heart love till now? Forswear it, sight
For I ne'er saw true beauty till this night.
When Robin knew she was fucked, she was laying in Nancy Wheeler's bed. Not totally fucked, but enough to consider that perhaps this wasn't her best course of action. This, of course, being Nancy Wheeler.
The sprawling city of Babylon rests itself between Nancy's arms, and Robin thought herself the most peculiar of explorers. Surely this leads to the downfall of something, the creeping suspicion that Robin would let Nancy sweeten her until she rots for only a glimpse of life with the Wheeler girl.
Despite it all, a kiss here, a thumb beneath a waistband. Quickened breaths between slotted lips, wandering eyes and fanned eyelashes. This is everything Robin is trying to memorize with Nancy Wheeler above her.
If she could, she'd memorize every thread in the other girl's jacket, the fleece brushing her jawline. She holds her breath, stilling her hand just above the small of Nancy's back.
Nancy is poetry in motion and Robin never liked poetry, but she might just start now, might search every word in all four languages she knows for a chance at describing the feeling of Nancy Wheeler's hips.
"What are you thinking about?" Nancy whispers against her lips, eyes still closed.
"Nothing. Everything." She blushes. "You."
"Not a bad thing to think about. but I am…" Nancy presses a kiss to her jaw, and mumbles against her skin, "Right here."
"Right. You're right here." And for once, Robin quiets her brain and focuses on the girl in front of her.
Nancy Wheeler makes every kiss feel like her last, a fervor beyond anything Robin has ever imagined. It gets messy, clashing teeth and bitten lips and Robin has never felt more devout than she does with Nancy.
These violent delights have violent ends,
And in their triumph die; like fire and powder,
Which, as they kiss, consume: the sweetest honey
Is loathsome in his own deliciousness,
And in the taste confounds the appetite:
Therefore love moderately: long love doth so.
Shaking in excited gasps, Robin clutches her chest only to feel delicate fingertips wrap around her hands, soothing and smoothing nerves.
Nancy is above her, curls hanging down into her face. "Sweet girl, you don't need to be scared of me."
Robin laughs nervously, winding her fingertips around Nancy's own. "I'm not scared of you." Nancy looks at her, full of playful disbelief. "I'm not!" Robin protests.
Nancy pulls Robin's hands up over her head with one of her own, wrapped around her wrist, and whispers, "Can I touch you?" She's hovering, and Robin can feel every breath, every place her fingers encircle Robin's wrist, and she can't breathe.
She falters, breath not coming to meet her pleas. "Can you do it nicely?" She begs.
Nancy grins, but her smile isn't exactly sweet. Robin hitches a breath. "Haven't I always?" Robin bites her lip and nods, a little too fast. "Trust me, sweetheart." Something's wrong. Nancy trails her hand up Robin's side, coming to clutch under her ribs a little too hard.
Her quickened heartbeat a drum to keep her calm, Robin whispers a rebuttal of "Haven't I always?" While she tries to get out from underneath her.
"You can touch me, you know." Nancy's voice nips at her ear, and Robin feels like she's floating. "I don't mind." She dips down to catch Robin's lips between hers, and Robin almost loses herself.
Robin can't breathe and she rips her mouth away to gulp at fresh air. She can't touch Nancy because Nancy burns and every fingerprint feels like a brand. She tilts her head up and gasps when she's met with flickering and heaving, the Nancy above her turning to vines wrapped around her wrists, and Vecna himself turns the corner.
She screams, a raw, guttural thing, chest heaving and air ripped from her lungs. She kicks away from the vines and feels her shoulder wrench, doing her best to keep the cry in.
Robin knows now why it felt wrong, feels sick to her stomach for falling for it. She cries out for Nancy, screaming her throat raw with calls of guilty and desperation. The vine around her left wrist twists tighter and tighter, other vines caging her chest.
She can hear Nancy, hear her shrieking her name, but as the vines wrap her throat, and Vecna gets closer, Robin can no longer scream.
"Robin. You didn't think you'd win, did you?" Vecna seems calmer than his words, he knows the fight is over. Robin struggles against his restraints, fighting to keep the vines away from her mouth.
"Fuck….you." She manages, gasping and coughing. If she didn't know any better, she might think Vecna smiled, a cruel, vindictive thing.
He steps forward, clawed hand reaching over her face, and Robin tries to scream, but nothing will come out. She feels her bones splinter, her body slumps into the vines. As the breath fades from her lungs, her last thought is of Nancy Wheeler in the seventh grade, handing her a perfect pencil.
Oh happy dagger, this is thy sheath;
There rest, and let me die.
Beyond the pale, Nancy Wheeler holds the mangled body of Robin Buckley and with a wail that redefines grief, she drops to her knees.
Hawkins will tell their story.