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"You really are a weird runner!" Nancy gasps her heart is still racing from the anxiety inducing chase. She sends a silent thank you to whoever for the slow guards. The one woman chorus of holy shit drowns out the Thompson Twins who lament about being king for a day, but she knows music will help calm Robin down much faster than speaking to her. Sliding a hand off the wheel she lays it on Robin's lap squeezing once to reassure her. Even as her heart pounds in her ears she listens as Robin's breath starts returning to normal. Looking back over for a brief moment she sees an easy smile cross her lips, voice shaky, "Thought that was your favorite thing about me."
"You know that's not my favorite." She takes Robin's hand and lays a kiss on her knuckles before running her thumb over them and returning her attention back to the road. It's nice being so open about this even if this has to stay with themselves, but here in her car miles away from Hawkins and lightyears away from the word she can be a girl in love. She's still reeling from the fact Robin took her of all people, so now that she has her she's diligent to never lose this, lose her. Because there's nobody in the world like Robin she knows there's nobody in the world she would take on every hunch or every stretched limb other than her.
A look of concern flashes across Robin's eyes. Tucking her head against her chest her bangs drape over her face hiding behind a curtain of insecurity. When Nancy asks her what's wrong she squirms in her seat obviously uncomfortable with the strap over her body. Pushing it behind her head rest Robin moves to face her with her back against the door and a leg over the passenger seat. She starts, stalls, and stops her sentences trying out which one seems better or more rightly worded. Nancy always believed she was prepared for whatever Robin has to say, but she learned a long time ago that nobody can predict Robin Buckley. "Do you ever wish we were normal?"
If she didn't have a car behind her Nancy would have slammed on the breaks and pulled over, but just like the question she can't predict traffic patterns. All she can do is keep driving and remind Robin of the love they hold for eachother. Twisting the wheel as the roads wind and weave she counts her breaths watching the trees that fly past serving as mile markers. The cemetery is only a few minutes away. She reigns in her swirling thoughts asking plainly, "What do you mean? Did your mother mention-"
"No this isn't about her. I'm talking about us. I'm a girl, you're a girl, and we're apparently sparing with an interdimensional primordial being who could be thousands of years old. It's just- do you ever wish that your life was different?" Robin honest blue eyes look back into her's before tacking on, "Sorry to interrupt you." Averting her gaze Robin starts picking at her cuticles probably going through a rant her mother must have told her about her manners. Dropping her hand onto Robin's lap she rubs her thumb over it mulling over what she wants to say. Robin values honesty above all else, but she doesn't like meaningless fluff.
She knocks out the easiest one first, "You know I'm happy with the fact you're a girl as long as you are. If you make me happy, which you do, and if I make you happy then who cares if we're both women? I've said it once and I'll say it again, you are perfect for me. You have everything my last boyfriend's lacked. Trusting me even without the lights on and backing me up where I fell through. Then you're excelling at the parts I loved about them. Sure you're not a star athlete like Steve, but you're just as sweet and goofy. Jonathan- he- shit. He was too much like me and you- you're who I wish I could be, so I don't want to be normal if it isn't with you."
They pull onto a rough gravel road she hears Robin respond, "I'm happy with you too, but you're avoid- holy shit Max!" She doesn't wait for Nancy to park before tumbling out of the car scrambling up the road on uneven feet and jagged rocks stabbing into her flesh. Nancy throws her car into park seeing the aftermath and what they managed to prevent. Lucas curls himself around Max while Dustin is leaning against Steve celebrating by pulling on the edges of his shirt. Hurrying to them Max is still hyperventilating, but regaining her composer quickly. Everyone's murmuring reassurances to her as her bleary eyes fall on Robin, she rasps, "Robin, what the hell are you wearing?"
Later that night they have all decided to crash in her basement with Steve paying for pizza as a way to celebrate nobody dying today. The kids took it handily but the ever rambunctious Max is more reserved, of course she would be she's the one who almost died, but Lucas and Dustin are attached to her side trying their best to make her crack a smile. Nancy can't bring herself to be in the moment as her eyes trail across the room spying Steve smirking at a gagging Robin who grows so exaggerated she starts choking and coughing. A smile comes to her face seeing her so happy, but it's tinged with a line of sadness.
Unlike their makeover before Pennhurst as they undressed and returned to decently comfortable clothes the air was filled with an unbreakable silence and shattered eye contact. She's used to not talking to Robin for hours on end because to the outside world they've never met and to their friends there's still an unchecked animosity, but this? This is torture. It's a silence she caused. A silence borne from her own. Robin knows how much disdain she has for the supernatural how it's stolen her childhood and replaced a youthful reckless endangerment for a world weariness only forgotten veterans seem to carry.
She knows some part of that little girl is still with her maybe it's from the fact that everytime she faces it she's atleast in a stable relationship. Which she has a track record for destroying when the tension of conflict collides with the stress of a battlefield-like environment, and she's fairly certain it's about to happen here. This might be the crack that breaks them or this is just the stepping off point for something larger. Nancy knows she can't fix the crack with scotch tape and the words, I'm sorry, instead she needs to bring the gold and an answer for why she's so scared to talk about it.
Said it brought them together. When Will was taken Robin was almost was aswell. She heard about Nancy and wanted to help. With a healthy amount of rambling and references to French literature Nancy will never fully understand two planets collided. What started as a rebound friendship in the face of losing the person closest to her blossomed out into something she never thought possible. The roots of themselves planted deep into eachother's heart branching off into their veins and the flowers of that love sang with every beat of their hearts. Through turmoil of Jonathan and the nuclear fallout of Steve she wasn't alone Robin was there to hold her hand when the world kept her so unbearably isolated.
When Bruce and all the other boys at the Post belittled her, when Jonathan took their side, she fell back onto Robin who would praise her genius and lighten her day with the tales of customers who couldn't find their way out of a burlap sack. During the worst times she knew Robin wouldn't leave like everybody else. How foolish could Nancy be to believe that Robin knew how to handle her worst because even when they were still only friends she could turn the worst day into something worth smiling for. Robin was wrong. There isn't something rotten in her, no, there's someone volatile in her life who ruins everything she loves.
"I can hear you thinking, Nance." Robin whispers from her place face down on the couch. The kids have gone to sleep scattered across the floor and Steve is dead asleep in the most uncomfortable way imaginable. Nancy drags herself up from her makeshift pallet on the floor and presses her back against the body of the couch. She brings her knees up hugging them close laying her chin on top. Afraid to break the silence she comments quietly to the void infront and not the world behind her, "I thought you were asleep."
"I can't sleep when we argue." Robin's words are muffled from pressing her face hard against the seat cushion. She offers a hand dropping it beside Nancy so she can play with her rings. It's a time honoured tradition that's been missing from today, and Nancy's not above admitting she hated not having the contact. Right now that tradition feels too sacred for her scarred hands not wanting to hurt Robin more than her silence has already caused. She deflects with a teasing, "So we had an argument now?"
"Don't be like that, it confuses me, and yes. I upset you with my question and now you're avoiding me again." The way Robin tacks on the last word is like a nail in her heart. She's tried to push Robin away so many times, but like a bad penny she keeps showing back up at her doorstep with a movie and discount popcorn. Despite not knowing how to interact with the world around her she knows Nancy. That's what makes her so incredibly beautiful. Very few people in her life have such an intrinsic knowledge of her that the idea of her upsetting them twists in her stomach. Running her hands through her hair Nancy sighs, "You're right I'm sorry. I need to explain myself for not answering. It's the least you deserve."
Nancy chances a look over her shoulder to find Robin's light blue eyes peering back, wet with unshed tears, "I don't hate the fact we met, I could never, but I hate how we met. You were almost in Will's place and hate to break it to you but your mom is no Joyce Byers. We could have never met and that idea is so horrifying... I never want to imagine it. Yeah, I wish we were normal in a sense. I wanted to meet you at a volleyball match where you were in the band and we'd lose because let's be honest we were terrible. Maybe we could have met at one of Steve's games and he'd probably go off to some stupid after game party without me you would have given me your jacket because spring in Indiana means negative twenty."
"You think we would have met after ten-ish years of being in the same seventy people class and yet never colliding?" Robin asks. Nancy knows how hard she tried to hide in the crowd of nameless faces that are the teenagers of Hawkins. It's a curse really. To be a part of the background when she's on the stage all by herself, but it's a performance Robin perfected to a fault. Now that she knows her, loves her, she could find her girlfriend in a swarm of doppelgangers with even the slightest glance.
"I do." Nancy finds herself finally smiling again, "I like to think in every world, in every universe, there's an us. Either as best friends, mortal enemies, or girlfriends we were meant to find eachother. We will always meet when we're supposed to. Because to me you're the beginning and the end of all of my sentences. You're my entire world Robin and as much it hurts to know how we met I'm so glad we did. I feel like I don't say it enough but I love you."
"Even if we have to hide it?" Robin sounds so scared but there's a smile in her voice. If Nancy were to glance over her shoulder she would probably see her face just a few inches away with a wrinkled brow and a sly smile. A fond laugh paints her voice, "Especially if we have to hide it. It doesn't matter if I shout it from the rooftops or whisper it in a smelly basement it will always be true. I've never felt this way about somebody in my entire life. You light up my world with your little noises when your bored or excited, when you slap my hands with all your excess energy, or your little names you give everybody who's lucky enough to know you."
"You're normal, I'm normal, we are normal. There isn't anybody else I want to figure out this life with." Nancy finishes with enough courage brimming over into her actions. She quickly turns her face and presses a kiss onto Robin's plush lips. A noise of surprise fills the room right before she feels her lean into it furthering their kiss. Warm hands with cold metallic rings slip into her hair teasing the perm Nancy refuses to get rid of. Pulling back she sees Robin smiling so bright it almost lightens up the dark almost pitch black basement. In a soft sing song voice Robin rasps, "You like like me!"
Pressing another kiss on her chin Nancy confirms, "I love you."