Work Text:
All’s quiet at the Squawk.
For the past few months, the station has been anything but, almost constantly occupied by its operators— mainly Robin and Steve, but sometimes Nancy and Jonathan, too— the chief, and the kids. More recently, the displaced Wheeler-Byers conglomerate have more or less made the place their home. It’s a place that Robin would typically call noisy, always full of music, bickering, laughter, arguing, strategizing, something.
Now, there’s almost no sign of life.
Robin sits in the On-Air booth, spinning slowly in her chair. Her knees are tucked up to her chest, and she rests her chin on them, arms wrapped around her legs to keep them close.
The quiet hangs in the air thick, like fog. It’s a somber quiet, a tense quiet, the kind that comes after a failure. If she closes her eyes, she can still see it: the back of the truck, ravaged, torn apart, and empty. The kids, gone.
Sinclair sits at the desk just outside of her booth, his arms crossed and his head resting on them, staring at nothing with half-lidded eyes. He’d slunk upstairs a while ago, giving Robin a halfhearted wave, but sensing that she hadn’t really wanted to talk. He, too, is probably stuck, thinking about the children they’d failed to save.
Robin sighs, long and tired, through her nose. Her eyes pass over shelves that hold countless records, organized by genre and alphabetized (which, she’d like to point out, is not the way old Jimmy Lee left them). She tries not to, but she thinks about Vickie: how by now, she’s surely given up on their date; how her hair was probably styled in that fluffy, pretty away that Robin loves, how her bottom lip, painted with sparkling gloss, probably trembled when she finally realized Robin wasn’t coming.
Up on the wall, the clock ticks. It’s just past midnight now. At the desk, Sinclair drops his head down, as if trying to sleep.
Tick,
Vickie’s smile– that gorgeous, fucking irresistible smile– faltering, fading, when Robin had cancelled on her.
Tick,
The empty truck, the unadulterated chasm of fear splitting Robin’s chest open.
Tick,
That demogorgon, stalking toward her on sinewy limbs, its trembling maw opening wide, baring hundreds of spit-slicked teeth at her.
Tick.
Fuck this. Robin stands up suddenly, her chair squeaking. Sinclair jolts awake, and squint-glares sleepily at her. Sorry, she mouths at him. He glares a moment longer, then shrugs and puts his head back down.
Careful to walk lightly, Robin creeps out of the booth and toward the shelf that hides the basement door. The quiet’s starting to drive her nuts, and she’d at least like to make sure that Will’s alive down there. Joyce and the Wheeler kid had rushed him in not too long after the demogorgon had mysteriously died before her eyes, and she’d gathered through their clipped explanations that Will had been behind it– which, what? But it had been impossible to get any further information, and once Robin had gathered that Will wasn’t in imminent danger, she’d accepted her role as the outsider in the situation and gone off to skulk and wallow until things cleared up.
As soon as she gets the basement door open, she hears hushed voices. Creeping down the stairs, she stops to listen:
“It’s okay, Mrs. Byers, really,” Wheeler’s saying, gently. “You need rest, and– and I need, uh, want, uh– I mean, I’ll stay here.”
As always, Joyce sounds reluctant to leave her son. “But what if something happens? What if he wakes up?”
“Then I’ll call you right away, I swear. You have one of these, right?” Robin presumes he’s showing her a walkie. “Just keep it on, and I’ll call.”
Indecisive shuffling, the jingling of keys, and a muffled yawn. “If you’re sure.”
“I’m sure.” Wheeler sounds soft, earnest– two things Robin has never personally experienced from him, and frankly wasn’t sure he was capable of. Whenever she’d met him back at Scoops, he’d been nothing short of an annoying little shit, whose sense of entitlement far exceeded what should be able to fit in his tiny little body. She’d never quite been able to figure out why the rest of those kids followed him around like their pack leader, like he commanded some kind of respect.
More shuffling. “You’ll- you’ll really call?” Joyce’s voice cracks with both uncertainty and exhaustion.
“I will, Mrs. Byers,” Mike repeats, “I promise.”
“O-okay.” Footsteps, and then Robin realizes that she’s about to be caught eavesdropping. Although she has every right to be here, something feels wrong about Joyce discovering her at the top of the stairs– so before she emerges from the doorway, Robin darts down the stairs and rounds the corner, leaping into the shadows of the hallway just in time for Joyce to appear. She doesn’t notice Robin, but glances hesitantly back into the room where her son is sleeping before walking slowly up the stairs.
Robin waits to hear the door click shut before she emerges from her hiding spot and approaches the doorway to the control room. She steps gingerly, quietly, not entirely sure what she’s going to encounter when she turns the corner.
What she finds is a surprisingly tender scene:
The room is dim, lit only by a single desk lamp. On the couch lies Will Byers. Robin has only known the kid for a few months, and only really started to know him over the past few days, but she can tell that something is wrong: he’s lying on his side, a blanket drawn up over his shoulders. His hair is frizzy and matted, his skin is ghostly pale, and his lips look blue, almost like he’s hypothermic. His eyes are closed.
There are two chairs drawn up to the side of the couch. One of them, once occupied by Joyce, is empty. Mike Wheeler sits in the other.
To Robin, Wheeler— and all the others, for that matter— have never stopped being kids. In her mind, they’re still the same little assholes who asked for too many free ice cream samples, or made Steve and Robin sneak them into the movie theater. Small, innocent, brash, loud, and a little bit of a dick— these are all things that Robin would typically use to describe Wheeler.
Right now, he seems anything but.
He’s hunched over in his seat, elbows resting on his knees and chin resting on his hands. His hair, always a mop of sorts but especially so tonight, is extra messy, curls unkempt as though he hasn’t thought about his appearance in a very long time. He never looks away from Will.
Taking a deep breath, Robin knocks on the doorframe twice, lightly. Still, Wheeler startles, jolting in his seat.
“Jesus, you scared me,” he mutters, letting out a shaky breath. He doesn’t invite her inside. He doesn’t tell her to leave, either.
“How is he?” Hesitantly, she breaches the border of the room and steps inside.
“He’s, um. He’s okay, I think.”
Robin pads over to the empty chair and sits down. Up close, Will looks even worse— she can see just how pale he really is, and the way that he trembles slightly. “He looks. . . cold.” She observes, softly.
Wheeler nods, chewing on his lower lip. “He is. We think it’s something to do with tapping into the hive— tapping into Vecna’s powers. Maybe it sucked all the heat out of him, or something.”
Robin hums in agreement and nods. They sit together in silence for a while. Robin listens to the quiet buzz of electricity in the room, the occasional shuffle of Mike’s feet on the ground, Will’s shallow, but steady, breathing.
“I always knew the kid was more special than he let on,” Robin admits after a few minutes pass. “Y’know– doesn’t give himself credit for how great he is. But I never expected that he’d have bone-cracking, demogorgon-killing superpowers.”
Wheeler lets out a little huff of laughter at that. “Yeah,” he replies, “me neither.” There’s an emotion that Robin can’t quite parse out in his voice– admiration, or maybe affection. He doesn’t look at Robin, though. His eyes are fixed on Will’s sleeping form, a permanent frown on his face. The dim light of the desk lamp makes him look gaunt, tired, the bags beneath his eyes especially prominent. His hair is matted against his head, still a little damp, and his cheek is a little scratched up.
And Robin has to admit, he doesn’t look very much like the obnoxious brat that used to stroll up to her at Scoops Ahoy, backed by his posse– Byers included– and demand three scoops of chocolate peanut butter cup, with chocolate sprinkles. He doesn’t act like it, either. Then again, maybe the end of the world changes you– or maybe, Mike Wheeler just grew up.
“Y’know, kid,” Robin says, slowly, “you don’t look so hot yourself. You should get some sleep, too.”
Mike’s eyes flicker over to her for a split second. He shakes his head. “It’s okay– I’m not tired.”
Robin sees right through it. “You are, though.”
Mike finally turns his head to look at her fully, eyebrows drawn together. “Okay? I’ll sleep here, then.” And there it is, just a little bit of that old Wheeler snark, the flash of steel in his eyes, the slight curl of his lip. It’s the same way with Nancy, too. Trying to tell a Wheeler what’s good for them, especially when they have other ideas on the matter, is frankly a Sisyphean task.
“Jesus, Wheeler,” Robin retorts, “what’s with the savior complex? I’m just trying to help. I might not be you, but I’m perfectly capable of watching him, too.”
“The hell’s that supposed to mean?” Wheeler glares at her. “I don’t- it’s not- I don’t have a savior complex, I just- I just. . .” He trails off, looking down at his lap, where he’s picking at the frayed seam of his pants. “You wouldn’t understand.” He mumbles this last part quietly, so quietly that Robin almost doesn’t hear him.
But Robin is nothing if not nosey. “What wouldn’t I understand?”
Wheeler won’t look at her. “It’s nothing.”
“Sounds like something to me.”
Wheeler ignores her, instead leaning forward to adjust the blanket laid over Will, pulling it up closer to his chin. He shows no sign of wanting to pay any attention to Robin again. Robin wants to press further, wants to know what exactly is going on in Wheeler’s head, but figures it’s no use. You can’t get inside a Wheeler’s head– trust her, she’s tried– unless they want you to be there, after all.
“You hungry, kid?” She asks instead, deciding to be helpful rather than pushy. “You can lie all you want about being tired, but you must be starving.”
Wheeler shakes his head. “I’m fine. Thanks.”
“O-kay.” She draws out the “y”, tapping her fingers on her thighs in a nonsensical pattern. When Wheeler barely spares her a glance, she rolls her eyes, but does what he clearly wants, and stands up to leave. Before she does, she wanders over to the other side of the room, where they keep a mini fridge and a drawer full of snacks, and snags a Snickers bar, which she tosses at Wheeler on her way out.
It hits him in the chest and falls into his lap. “Ow.” He deadpans, looking entirely unimpressed.
“Don’t stay up too late, kiddo.”
***
At around three in the morning, Robin jolts awake, once again slumped in her chair in the On-Air booth. When she glances over to the desk, Sinclair is gone, predictably enough. He’s just about the only kid that still has a stable home life, and besides, it was about time he ran off to take another shift at the hospital with Max.
Speaking of shifts by bedsides– she wonders if Wheeler is still awake.
With a yawn and a stretch, she sneaks downstairs again, careful to skip the creaky steps.
The scene before her speaks for itself.
The dim desk light bathes the room in a soft, warm glow. A crumpled Snickers wrapper sits on the coffee table. Wheeler’s chair has crept closer to the couch, nearer to Will. His posture is slumped, his head tipped forward and his chin resting on his chest. One of his arms rests on the couch, just by Will’s head; the other sits in his lap, fist half-clenched.
He’s asleep.
He looks. . . young.
He looks a lot more like that kid that Robin had first met, when he was five-foot-nothing and the biggest problem on his mind was figuring out how to swindle Steve into giving him another free sundae. These days, Wheeler conducts himself more like a lieutenant than a high schooler, busy planning the next crawl or theorizing about Vecna’s whereabouts instead of doing his homework. She doesn’t exactly love the kid, but her heart sort of hurts for him, too. He might’ve been an asshole back in the day, but doesn’t everyone deserve to be a little asshole at some point?
Maybe Robin should cut little Wheeler a bit more slack, then. After all, he’s been fighting in this war for nearly four years now– far longer than Robin was ever even aware it was happening. He’s lost people to it before. One sister kidnapped, the other M.I.A., and both of his parents in critical condition. Honestly, she should probably give him more credit for keeping his shit together at all.
All that, and he’s still here. At Will’s side.
Food for thought, thinks Robin, as she turns to retreat back up the stairs.
***
Hours later, pale sunlight floods through the dusty windows at the Squawk, and Robin hasn’t slept a wink.
She’s leaning up against the countertop, waiting for the drip coffee to finish. She sets out two mugs– because even if Wheeler is an asshole, he might be less inclined to be an asshole if he has some caffeine in him– and pours a generous helping of coffee into both of them before making her way downstairs.
She’s sure she would’ve heard about it if Will had woken up sometime in the night, so it’s no surprise to her that when she peers through the doorway, Will’s position hasn’t changed.
Other things, though, have.
Wheeler’s chair has mysteriously migrated back to its original spot, several feet away from the couch. Which is weird, but easily explained enough. Maybe there was a draft coming through the doorway, and he’d gotten cold in the night. Maybe there was a leak in the ceiling. Maybe he’d wanted to be closer to the lamplight.
Or maybe, he’d wanted to be closer to Will.
And maybe, Mike hadn’t wanted anyone to know that.
But that wouldn’t make any sense, because that would mean that Mike felt some kind of shame about wanting to sit so near to Will, and that would mean–
Well.
Put it this way: Robin knows a thing or two about shame.
Like the night before, she knocks lightly on the doorframe to announce her presence before slipping into the room.
“Morning,” she says, quietly enough that this time, she doesn’t startle him. Wheeler glances at her, and makes a noncommittal noise as she sinks down into the chair next to him, one that Robin assumes means hello, but might also mean fuck off. She offers him a mug, and he takes it, muttering something that might have been thanks, but also might have been go away, I hate you.
“Charming as always,” she quips. No response.
They sit in silence, both cupping their mugs in their hands, both patiently waiting until it’s cool enough to drink. Will’s breathing, Robin notices, is a little more steady than it was last night, and he doesn’t seem to be shaking so badly.
After a while, Robin asks. “How was he last night?”
It takes Wheeler a moment to respond. “The same, I guess. I think he’s getting better, maybe.”
“That’s good.”
“Yep.”
Robin wriggles around in her seat until she gets comfortable, tucking one of her legs beneath her and letting the other dangle. “What was it like?” She asks, eager to break the silence. “Being there, I mean. Seeing him do that.”
Wheeler shoots her a sidelong glance, shifting uncomfortably. “I mean. I was mostly grateful, I guess. To not be dead.” His answer is short, clipped, like he’d rather be doing anything other than talking to Robin right now.
Robin pays him no mind. “Hey– he’s kinda like El, now, isn’t he?” Robin lets out a breathless laugh at the thought. They’ll be like weird super-powered twins. What a concept, she thinks.
Wheeler winces. “I guess.”
“You guess?” Robin stares at him. “I think it’s amazing,” she rambles, “like, he’s seriously awesome.”
Suddenly, Wheeler whips around to face her, with enough force that his chair shifts, scraping against the floor with a harsh squeal. “What the hell’s your problem?” He snaps, his face contorted in a deep scowl. “Who do you think you are? You think now, just ‘cause he has– because he’s powerful now, you wanna be his friend? You can’t just- just pretend that you know him, when really you don’t know anything! You don’t know anything.”
Robin startles at the sudden outburst, tossing her hands in the air in surrender “I wasn’t trying to-”
“No, you were! Just stay out of it, okay?”
“You’re acting insane, Wheeler,” Robin retorts, because he is. “What’s your problem? Is nobody allowed to care about Will except for you?”
Mike laughs, cold and bitter. “You have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“You didn’t answer my question.”
“I don’t have to answer your stupid question.”
“It’s not a stupid question,” Robin counters. “You’ve been acting like an asshole every time I so much as set foot in this room, like you’re- like you’re his guard dog, or something, and I just don’t get it! What did I do wrong?”
“You didn’t– it’s not– I just– I– ugh.” Wheeler cuts himself off with an aborted growl, pressing his hands to his eyes and dragging them down his face. He stays like that for a while, head hung low. When he resurfaces, his eyes are wet, glistening, and red-rimmed.
He says, quietly: “I don’t know.”
And Robin pauses. Tips her head to the side, slightly, as if looking at him from a new angle will help her to understand. “What?”
Mike’s gaze flicks up to meet hers for a split second, and she sees it: a hairline crack in the lieutenant’s resolve, a chip in his armor– a window into his mind. Miniscule, but just enough for Robin to see what lies beneath it all.
Mike Wheeler is terrified.
“I don’t know,” he repeats, with the faintest tremor in his voice. “I don’t know why. . .” He trails off. Worries his lower lip with his teeth, biting down hard enough to draw blood. Stares, wide-eyed and helpless, at Will, as if somehow he holds all of the answers.
He doesn’t say much, but Robin thinks she understands.
She thinks she understands how it feels, to look at someone– a friend, a classmate– and feel so. . . strongly about them. To react, anytime someone else got too close to them, and not quite know why. To feel so much that it feels like you’re dying, that your heart’s so swollen with emotion that it’s taking up your whole chest and you can’t breathe, that you’re drowning in it. And you don’t think of it as anything other than friendship, because you don’t know that another option even exists, but somehow, you still know to be ashamed of it.
“Oh, kid.”
Wheeler refuses to look at her, but to her surprise, he doesn’t flinch away when she lays a hand on his shoulder after a moment of hesitation. She can feel him trembling beneath her palm.
They don’t speak for a long time.
That’s okay, because Robin has a lot to think about– primarily about how she was incredibly, possibly even catastrophically wrong. Wheeler isn’t Tammy Thomspon at all– not in the slightest.
If anything, Mike Wheeler is the very antithesis of Tammy Thompson.
Robin mulls this over for a while, and comfortingly thumbs over the wrinkled fabric of Wheeler’s sweater-clad shoulder. Eventually, the trembling subsides.
She takes her hand away, bringing it back to rest in lap, where she can anxiously tangle her fingers together.
“It’s gonna be okay.”
It’s not her finest prose, but it’s the only thing she can think to say. It doesn’t feel right to take it any farther, to nudge Mike any closer to the answer he’s looking for. Robin’s not sure he even knows what kind of question he’s asking, or if he’s asking anything at all.
But maybe, he understands enough to know what she means– that she isn’t talking about Vecna, or Will’s condition. Because:
“I’m sorry,” he says, quietly. Practically chokes on it. But still says it, which means something. When he finally looks at her again, his eyes are rimmed with red and his freckled cheeks are wet. Robin doesn’t comment on it, and pretends not to notice.
She rises from her seat, stretching her arms above her head in an exaggerated motion. “It’s alright,” she says, giving him a weak smile. “I’ll be upstairs if you need anything, ‘kay?”
He nods silently, probably grateful to be left alone, and then turns back to Will, as though staring at him will make him wake up sooner.
As Robin is approaching the doorway, she hears the rustle of fabric, a sharp intake of breath.
“Mike?” Will’s voice is weak, hollow, roughened from disuse.
Robin turns to lean against the doorframe, just in time to catch Wheeler vaulting out of his chair to kneel by the couch.
“Will!” He exclaims, and it’s the happiest Robin has ever heard him. “Oh my God, Will— are you— do you feel okay?” His hands dance frantically, erratically, to briefly clutch Will’s wrist, to snatch them away again, to grab the abandoned walkie lying on the table, which Mike nearly drops.
His voice is soft, so soft, softer even than the tone he’d taken with Mrs. Byers last night. A far cry from the harsh tone he’d taken with Robin just moments ago.
Will props himself up on his elbows, and Mike is reaching for him, rambling rapidfire concerns, “Hey, hey, take it easy, don’t overdo it, are you feeling okay? Are you cold? Shit, I gotta call your mom, I said I would as soon as you woke up. . .”
With sleepy, unfocused eyes, Will looks past Mike and notices Robin. He opens his mouth as if to say something to her, but Robin shakes her head and looks pointedly at Mike— who’s now fumbling with the buttons on his walkie. I’ll catch you later, she tries to say. Right now, he needs you more.
Although it takes him a moment, Will seems to understand, and he turns his attention back to Mike. “I guess I’m a little cold,” he admits quietly, maybe just to soothe his rambling. Robin can barely hear him.
“Cold? How cold? Like, freezing? Here, there’s gotta be more blankets around here somewhere, just gimme a second. . .” Wheeler nearly trips over himself in pursuit of a blanket, and Robin has to hold back a laugh.
Idiot, she thinks.
He’ll figure it out eventually. Hopefully. He's a smart kid, or so she's heard.