Chapter Text
As Nancy was pulling on the itchy pink and white dress from the literal basement of Hawkins Memorial, she thought to herself–for the first time in her life–that maybe this plan was a bit stupid.
Okay, maybe it was incredibly stupid. Posing as a hospital volunteer to sneak her and Mike, who is wearing a hospital gown, mind you, to interrogate their freshly-mauled mother about their missing sister may not have been the smartest plan.
So yeah, she wasn’t feeling all that confident in her strides to get Holly back so far.
Not only that, but she found her parents covered in blood in their own home. Disgusting, jagged slashes all across their bodies, bleeding out in ways that shouldn’t be possible for someone who was going to live, how they were both lifeless–
No. She can’t think of that right now. She washed her hands of it, figuratively and literally, and she needed to be the anchor right now. The one dependent in the most unknown situation they’ve faced. Thinking about Holly being taken, the same way Will was, being changed forever at such a young age–
Nancy sinks her long nails into her palm, pushing and pushing the thoughts away as she unlocked the bathroom door. Breathe in, breathe out. Compartmentalizing was something she became accustomed to when she was fifteen, and four years later she uses it now just as much as she did then. But when she spots Mike, who looks so pathetic, standing against the wall clad in a blue hospital gown, she figures this plan can’t be too bad.
As they walk down the halls, avoiding doctors and nurses alike, Nancy’s dress feels like it’s restricting her more and more. Mike tries his hand at limping.
It’s very bad.
“What kind of limp is that?”
“It’s a limp. It’s a regular limp.”
Nancy can only huff out a deep breath at that, because all too suddenly her eyes are drawn to a room right in front of them. She would argue that the door was slightly ajar, making it almost impossible for her to take her eyes off of the occupied room, but that’s not the only reason why she stopped dead in her tracks.
It was her laugh.
It was Robin’s laugh and Robin’s raspy voice that led her to the opening of the sickly sterile room. It was like Robin was a siren, and Nancy was just a poor, old sailor, unknowingly heading toward her own violent death.
Because there Robin was, behind the door. Nancy was right, it was her laugh, it was her voice. Nancy could have picked her voice out of anywhere, with its deep rasp and funny lilt. The feeling settled so deeply in her chest, being so sure of something and it turns out she was right the whole time. Nancy usually loves being right.
But, what she’s come to figure out, Robin isn’t alone.
She’s got some red-head pushed up against the wall, holding her softly, laughing into her kisses, and making quiet promises thinking no one can hear them. Nancy can see the way Robin kisses, and can practically feel it on her own lips if she focuses hard enough. She kisses like she talks, unsure at first, but diving deeper into a confidence not many people have. Nancy doesn’t mean to stare, she really doesn’t, but the category five emotional whiplash she’s experiencing has made it nearly impossible to get her feet moving again.
First, out of anything, she feels shocked. She also feels silly for being shocked, because really, of course Robin…favored women. She had this whole insistence that her and Steve would never work, and maybe if Nancy read between the lines a bit more– they were kind of obvious, in retrospect–she’d have figured it out sooner. So, now as she feels shocked, she also feels stupid. Stupid for not paying attention, stupid for not noticing, and stupid for pushing the whole Steve thing onto her.
Aside from her own shock and stupidity, she also feels…She’s not sure how she feels. She feels like someone has taken their hand, smashed through her sternum, and started squeezing her heart. She feels like someone took a sledgehammer and socked her right in the gut. She feels like someone pulled the rug right out from under her, sending her flying backwards until she’s just falling, falling, falling.
She’s not against gay people at all, she considers herself a modern woman, so then why the hell was her stomach swirling with anger, with fury, as she watches Robin kiss her like nothing else matters. Her chest seems to cave in, and she can’t quite take another deep breath. She can feel her anger spread from the pit of her gut, all throughout her veins, up into her heart.
It feels like something she’s felt before. When girls would flirt with Steve in the hallway, or when Jonathan would make a comment about a classmate in California. It feels like…jealousy? Why would she be jealous? What, Robin kissing a girl so softly in front of her, carding her fingers through her hair, smiling into the kiss like she’s the only other person in the world, makes her jealous? It’s probably just an emotional fluke. She tells herself she misses the honeymoon stage with Jonathan. That could be enough. That will be enough.
She’s fine though. She’s totally fine watching Robin kiss another girl in front of her. A thought passes through her brain, quicker than she could process. She kind of wants to kiss Robin–
“Nance, is that…”
–If Robin were a boy, or if she weren’t a girl. Of course, we can’t forget that Nancy is straight.
Because Nancy is straight…
“Shit.”
…Right?
She finally registers what Mike said lowly under his breath, but not before she crashes into a nurses cart situated directly outside of the room. There’s a loud noise, and before she knows it her and Mike are bolting off down the hall. She doesn’t turn around, she doesn’t tell Mike to stop, she just runs until the feeling is gone.
She thinks she’ll be running forever, if not for her mother’s room being just one hall over.