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“Do you miss him?”
Robin blinks at Nancy’s question, watching as she swings her feet back and forth, the window sill she’s perched on too high up for her toes to even graze the ground.
And the thing is…Robin misses Steve with an ache that’s persistent and ever present in the back of her mind; like a missing limb you never grow accustomed to. Her goddamn soulmate, attached at the hip, and then just…not, as she moved two states over and into her dorm room.
She misses Steve with an intensity that might not translate well if she tries at all to describe it, already uncomfortable with the way other people have asked her that question, especially as the fourteenth fast approaches and the halls are littered in slap-dash paper hearts and pink lace to announce the arrival of the romantic holiday.
There’s only so many times you can say the word “platonic” before people begin to roll their eyes.
So she hums instead, shrugging while at the same time slipping her hands into her pockets, before leaning towards the wall, aiming for casual.
“Not like that.” Is all she offers.
She doesn’t know how to say the other part of it, the part that wants to tumble out of her mouth in the nervous verbosity that always betrays her.
How she isn’t so bad, with Nancy here. Knowing she’s not alone, that there’s someone else here who knows about the things in the dark. How she’s finally got a friend - a girl friend, something she’s never really had before; though, not for lack of trying.
She doesn’t know what it is, but there’s always been something about her that others have pinged as weird. Just a little too off, a little too this, a little too that. She talks a lot, she knows too many things, and she often forgets all the little parts of being a girl that women are supposed to inherently know - who to look at, who to not, how to dress, how to talk; she’s just never understood it.
Nancy had noticed it too, put off in the same way, back in the beginning; and Robin doesn’t know either what had changed, only that Nancy had looked a little past it, all the awkwardness and oddity of her, and seemed to like her anyway, to her own surprise.
So, friend. Her first real friend who’s a girl, and Robin is determined not to blow it, not over the teensy, unmentionable little crush she’s been nursing.
Instead, she asks the question she doesn’t really want to know the answer to, the one that makes her stomach tighten to think about the reply. But it’s the question a friend would ask.
“Do you miss him?”
It’s been nearly a year since Jonathan and Nancy split. Robin doesn’t know everything, not all the details, but she remembers that Nancy was angry, and hurt. And angry and hurt tend to only happen when you care, which means there’s a likely chance Nancy still carries feelings towards him.
Not that Robin would ever hold a chance if she didn’t, but still.
Nancy crosses her ankles, ceasing the swinging.
“I think so.” Her face does something complicated, flashes a little something like guilt. “Probably…probably not the way I should. Probably something closer to the way you miss Steve.”
“Oh.” Robin remarks, unsure what else to say to that.
“It’s stupid,” Nancy continues, “But one of the things I keep thinking is ‘I’m going to be alone for Valentines,’ which is ridiculous. That shouldn’t be the first thing I think of when I think about him, and yet…” She shrugs. “It’s what makes me the most sad.”
“You don’t have to be! You could spend it with me!” Robin blurts, her mouth running away with her before she has the chance to stop it.
Shit. Salvage it, Robs!
“Uh, I mean,” She stammers in a hurry, turning her head away to hide the heat she feels rushing towards her cheeks. “You know, friends commiserating being single, or whatever. Something Steve and I have done before - platonically, of course, I wouldn’t ask you to - well, not that I wouldn’t, but I -“
The ball is rolling away from her, and she can’t keep up with it, and her pathetically uncoordinated legs are tangling up in each other in the process, trip-tumbling face first into a mess of her own making.
“Robin,” Nancy cuts her off, knowingly by now, grown too familiar with her in the months they’ve spent close together.
Robin snaps her mouth shut and turns to the call of her name on instinct, only -
Only Nancy has leaned closer, and by turning her head, Robin comes nose to nose with her, lips brushing automatically, and Robin’s heart leaps right up into her throat.
Nancy leans into it, a chaste press, but not timid; then she pulls back, a sweet smile curling into one cheek.
“Ask me properly.”
“Huh?” Robin says, dumbly.
“Valentines. Ask me properly.”
Nancy blinks, waiting patiently for Robin to catch up. Robin feels her mouth open and close a few times in the attempt to do so, her brain furiously trying to reboot itself so she can make a suitable reply.
Finally, finally, when she’s managed to process that Nancy just kissed me, and can move on to holy shit, Nancy just kissed me! there is enough brain power for her to connect the dots about what Nancy is asking for.
“Oh!” She gasps. “Oh, um. Nancy?”
“Yes?” Nancy responds, amused.
“Be…be my Valentine?” She asks, the question itself feeling surreal.
Nancy’s curls flutter in the slight breeze, and her pink cardigan looks soft and fuzzy in the glow of the afternoon sun. Robin wants to touch it, thread one hand through her hair and place the other on her shoulder, tilt her head to graze her lips again…
Nancy’s hand darts out, twining gently around the back of Robin’s head, pulling her in. She leans forward, intent clear, rather than positioned for an accident - and she kisses Robin.
It’s the second time, and yet Robin is no less caught off guard.
Nancy tastes like lipstick and mint, like longing and every single one of Robin’s secret dreams. Like a future she never thought was a possibility.
When Nancy pulls back, Robin’s eyes are half lidded and she feels dazed, though aware enough to revel in the way that Nancy’s cheeks are also a fetching shade of pink.
“That was a yes, by the way.”
“Yes to what?” She asks, lightheaded and thoughts full of nothing but the way Nancy’s mouth on hers had felt.
Nancy shakes her head, a fond expression stealing across her features.
“A yes to whatever you want, Buckley.”