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A heavy slam of a door startles Nancy from her steady perusal of her notes from the last meeting with Hopper, and she snaps her head up, staring down the empty hall she can see from her desk seat. In the ominous silence, she grits her teeth, a reprimand to Mike about being more careful leaping to the tip of her tongue.
She hates being startled. It makes her feel disjointed, leaving her reaching for a pistol hidden in a desk drawer, even as she tries to calm her racing heart.
She shuffles her papers, shoving them beneath scattered journalism work that she already doesn’t care about. The last thing she wants is for her mom to find anything that mentions blood, monsters, or rifts—she’d already gotten into a screaming match with Mike about playing D&D, and Nancy has no interest in incurring her wrath.
Instead of the familiar gait of Mike though—taking the stairs two at a time as quickly as he can, no matter the fact that he’s almost run into the wall three times—a set of soft footsteps rise to her ear before hushed voices follow.
She glances down the hall again to find Steve and Robin furiously arguing at the top of the landing, their faces set into expressions she can’t figure out.
She doesn’t bother clearing her throat as Robin glances over her shoulder and meets her gaze, her cheeks immediately flushing a bright red.
“Nance!” she says, her eyes widening as she does a funny sort of bow. “How—fancy seeing—top of the morning to you!”
Nancy ignores the way Steve groans and twists to look at her clock, taking in the time for a full ten seconds, before she turns back to the two of them.
“It’s three in the afternoon,” she says, arching a brow, already unimpressed with whatever’s happening. “I hope you know that.”
“Of course, I know that,” Robin says, before looking at Steve. “I knew that, right?”
He pinches the bridge of his nose. “Yeah, Robs,” he says, fondness dripping from his voice for all that he forcibly begins to corral her down the hall towards Nancy’s room, “Do you think we’d be here if the house was full of people?”
“Oh, right,” Robin says, nearly tripping on the rug and catching herself on Nancy’s doorframe. “Hi, Nance.”
“Hi, Ro,” Nancy says, rolling her eyes even as she tries to smother a smile. “What’s got you all—” she gestures, trying to capture the frantic edge that Robin’s emitting, “—fizzy?”
Robin gasps, staggering back into Steve who huffs but lets her slide down him as if he's a wall. “I'm not,” she lowers her voice, as if Nancy's said something horrible, “fizzy.”
“Clearly, someone's been hanging out at the Eddie Munson School of Drama,” Steve says drily, reaching down to heave her up, Robin's limpness and noodle legs not a detergent even as she sprawls every which way.
Robin shakes her head, slumping back against him as he valiantly tries to keep her standing straight. “You're the best wall I've ever fallen against,” she says, even as Steve swears as some of her hair gets caught in the half-zip of his sweatshirt. “Don't get it twisted.”
“Why are you here?” Nancy cuts in, unwilling to be a part of the Steve&Robin show. She knows how they can be—knows that once they get going there's hardly a moment to stop it. Dustin’s bemoaned the fact that they love to see a bit dead before they stop a joke so many times she thinks she could recite his rant verbatim.
“Oh,” Robin says, shoving herself off of Steve and going bright red so fast that Nancy worries she'll pass out. “Uhm.”
Nancy waits, but Robin says nothing else. She watches as her blush spreads down her neck and to the tips of her ears as Robin nervously tucks her hair behind her ears.
She arches a brow, and Robin shrugs and sort of hiccups into motion, rocking forward a bit before backpedaling into Steve again.
“Kissing,” Steve blurts out, before Robin yowls, turning to him and shaking his shoulders. Nancy blinks, vaguely confused by what the hell is happening, and why it's happening to her.
She's a sort of good person, she thinks. She shouldn't have to listen to Steve Harrington talking about kissing again. Granted the last time, he'd climbed up her trellis and they'd talked about kissing girls for three hours before inevitably talking about kissing Jonathan, but she doesn't think this is going the same way, given how murderous Robin looks.
“It's not your turn,” Robin hisses. “Was it my turn when it was your turn?”
Steve squints at her, before he looks at Nancy, and then back to her. He mimes locking his mouth and throwing away the key.
“That's what I thought,” Robin mutters before she turns to look at her.
Nancy raises both eyebrows and Robin caves, slumping in on herself.
“This is stupid,” Robin mutters, before she steps forward, hooking her fingers into her own belt loops and shooting awkward finger guns at her.
“Kissing,” she says. “Uhm. We could?”
Nancy stares at her.
“You could,” Steve echoes, before holding his hands up when Robin presses her lips together and screams very quietly. “I'm being quiet now.”
“No, I'm interested in why exactly you're here,” Nancy says, rising up from her wooden chair and crossing her arms as she looks at Steve. “Not you, Ro,” she says when Robin opens her mouth. “Steve.”
Steve frowns at her, before gesturing at Robin and then back at him.
Nancy hates how it makes sense, because they are truly two peas in a godforsaken pod, but pretends it doesn't and narrows her eyes in her best approximation of Argyle’s unhappy stare.
Steve fidgets under her gaze for a moment before blowing a breath out. “Moral support?” he says, uncertainly. “Where else would I go?”
Nancy blinks at him, before she pinches the bridge of her nose and sighs.
This, unfortunately, makes too much sense.
“Why are you here suggesting kissing,” Nancy says flatly, when she can meet their gazes again. “Don't you have better things to do?”
“Than kiss?” Steve says, sounding scandalized, as Robin chirps, “Than see you?”
Nancy sighs again as they scowl at each other, before looking at her.
“You need to cut out the single brain cell,” she mutters, her brain whirring over everything they've said and everything they haven't. It doesn't escape her that neither of them has answered why. “It's not helping.”
“We'd have no brain cell then,” Robin says, wrinkling her nose. “Even though I want to kiss you, that doesn't mean you get to take it away.”
Nancy stops thinking for a moment, instead watching Robin steadily.
It's astounding to watch someone like Robin, who fidgets under the attention at first before she gradually settles into something easy. She's unquestionably beautiful, in her overalls that Nancy thinks she got from Joyce and her Hawkins Swim Team shirt she definitely stole from Steve, with her scarred hands and crooked grin.
Watching her is like watching wind ripple through the grass, buffeted all at once, but somehow still grounded.
She lets herself think about kissing her, about what it would feel to press her glossed lips to Robin’s chapped ones. Would she taste like oranges?
She hardly even registers Steve slipping away down the hall, as she steps closer and closer to Robin.
She stops close enough to count the freckles on her nose, close enough to see her eyelashes quiver as Robin darts a look down at her lips.
“Why are you thinking about this now?” Nancy breathes, letting her eyes drift up to meet Robin's. She's going to be heartbroken if this is some last hurrah before the final battle, but she's also going to seize it with both hands. Robin's not the only one who's thinking about kissing. “What's so important about this?”
Robin fidgets again before she stills and becomes more all of a sudden, her hand darting out to wrap warm fingers over Nancy's pulse point.
“I want to,” Robin says, gentle and steady, her eyes meeting Nancy's with steel she rarely sees. “I like you, and you're—you're Nancy, and the world isn't normal. Isn't that enough?” She blinks, Nancy watching her lashes again. “I could spill my heart out, I could say so many different things, but really, really—I just want to kiss you, Nancy Wheeler. And I don't want it to be something I don't let myself say because the end of the world is coming.”
She laughs, and Nancy steps forward, angling herself so that Robin's back bumps up against her bedroom wall.
She glances around, taking in the pinks, the sunshine that's dripping in through her gauzy curtains, before she looks back at Robin.
“I like you,” Robin whispers, rubbing her thumb against her pulse, before she quirks a smile as Nancy's heart jumps. “And if you don't like me, that's fine, but I have to say it'll be some really mixed sign—”
Nancy shuts her up the one way she knows how: by lifting her hand to press against Robin's jaw and pull her down as she rises up on tiptoes.
For a moment, everything freezes. There's nothing but the press of Robin's chapped lips to hers, before she hums and parts her mouth and then everything is slick and wet and good.
Nancy doesn't even know what she's doing as she winds her fingers tighter into Robin's hair. Robin makes some stuttering noise that does nothing but make her want even more deeply, and before she knows it, Robin surges forward and they're stumbling over to her bed.
Robin kicks the door closed with a slam, even as they try their best to not separate, mouths pressed together and hands in hair and then suddenly they've flipped all around, Robin beneath her.
Nancy pulls back and groans at the sight of Robin's mussed hair, her lips damp with Nancy's strawberry gloss. She lets herself be brave and want and settles more firmly on Robin's hips, looking down at her spread out across her bed.
“Hi,” Robin says breathlessly, before she starts to grin, her eyes scrunching up. “You know how to treat a lady to a good time.”
“Lady?” Nancy says, leaning forward to bite gently at Robin's cheekbone, her chest throbbing with something so vast and beautiful she doesn't know what to do. She wants to destroy something. She wants to build something. She wants to climb into Robin's ribs and build a home and dance until she's dead. “I don't see a lady here. Scoundrel maybe.”
“It would hurt more if you weren't smiling so big,” Robin murmurs, looking dazed. “There are cosmos in your eyes, Nance.”
Nancy tosses her head back and laughs, joy rushing up. Of course, there are cosmos in her eyes. She's looking at Robin.
“Hey,” she says, looking down at her. “You wanna see how long it takes for Steve to come looking?”
Robin laughs, sharp and loud, and Nancy can see whirlwinds in her eyes, bloodlust in her grin.
“You know,” she says, as Nancy leans down, closer and closer. “I do need to traumatize him now, since he's always the one ruining my life.”
Nancy grins, inches away. “I think I have the perfect plan in mind then,” she murmurs, and as Robin surges up, she thinks Robin might also have a perfect plan.