Work Text:
Robin is an expert in bad ideas. Her spidey-sense, so to speak, tingles deliciously when danger is near, so long as that danger is of the let’s spike the punch at the last band practice, or sure, let’s roll a joint made out of actual grass, or Mom, I swear I can handle The Exorcist, I won’t have nightmares variety.
Sure, she’s less of an expert in the faceless monster that eats other people’s faces, dark wizard who consumes the souls of children while snapping their bones variety.
But hey, she’s learning.
When Nancy Wheeler rolls up to the Squawk on the Tuesday before Christmas, with dark circles under her eyes and a razor-sharp smile pasted on her lips, Robin feels her bad-idea buzzer start to go off. This is the kind she knows well. The alarm heightens to a fever-pitch when Nancy waits until Steve’s out of the room—taking a leak or checking on the generator in advance of tomorrow’s forecasted snowstorm or just on a break from the unbearable ache of being in Nancy’s presence—to extend an invitation.
“Do you have plans on Christmas?”
Nancy asks questions, sometimes, like she’s lining up a target.
This is one of those sometimes.
Robin shrugs. Who has plans in Hawkins these days? Vickie is volunteering at the hospital Christmas Day so she doesn’t have to spend the day with a houseful of cousins—all of whom, unfortunately, stuck around Hawkins after the four-way split. Robin’s parents will expect her for breakfast, and for whatever counts as a gift-exchange this year, but after that…
“No, not really.” Steve is coming over to watch It’s a Wonderful Life at some point, but announcing that feels too pointed, these days, for Nancy.
With each passing week, Robin loses a little piece of Nancy she didn’t know she had treasured away in the first place.
Does that make us… friends?
How is it still 1986?
“My mom is hosting a potluck,” Nancy says, watching Robin closely. “The kids are coming. Well, you know. Half the kids are in my house all the time now. But the other kids are coming, and we thought…” It’s hard to know who’s included in that we, and Robin doesn’t press… “it might be nice to widen the age-range a little. You know, so I’m not stuck in the middle of an Erica-Dustin face-off.”
There’s a way Nancy has about her, a quirked smile and doe-eyes, that Robin has seen work on Steve many a time. It shouldn’t work on Robin, but she’s only human.
“OK, yes, I will come. I will accept my status as a better seatmate than Erica or Dustin.” Especially Dustin lately, she doesn’t add, though she could.
“Great.” Nancy’s tone is crisp. She turns, curls flying, and tosses over her shoulder—“Steve’s welcome too, you know.”
Because of course that’s what it’s about.
“Cool!” Robin says, and she really is going to add, tell him yourself!
But Nancy’s already gone.
“This is a bad idea.”
“But you suggested it,” Steve says, forehead wrinkling under the ever-coiffed swoop of The Hair. He’s got both hands on the wheel, staring steadily forward. The snow’s still coming down like… cats and dogs, or whatever the snow-appropriate equivalent of cats and dogs is. A plate of cornbread, the only thing Steve bakes with confidence, apparently, is balanced on Robin’s knees.
“Well, actually, Nance suggested it.”
He doesn’t answer. He already knows that; the fact that he’s wearing one of his nicest sweaters is proof. It’s burgundy. Really brings out his blushes.
Robin sighs. She should have made better use of her powers; clocked the bad idea and then prevented it from eating them both alive. Her by extension only, really. What can Nancy’s repression and Jonathan’s bitch-ass attitude do to Robin? But she will suffer on Steve’s behalf. It’s like watching a theatrical production of Saint Sebastian’s martyrdom. Nancy and Jonathan draw their bows, and prick, prick, prick, Steve’s their pincushion.
“Jeez, Steve, do we need to have another talk before we head into this?”
“Nope.” Mouth set in a firm line, stubborn as a mule.
“Holidays bring out the worst in people.”
“Yup.” He flicks a glance towards her. “My mom called this morning, by the way.”
“Oh,” Robin says. “That’s… good.”
“Yup.”
The women in Steve’s life are so fucking mean to him sometimes. Robin reaches over and grips his knee. He startles only slightly; he’s used to her total disregard of his personal space.
“I wish I could drive,” she tells him. “I mean, I can, but it’s not legal, and you’d never let me drive the Beamer—”
“—never,” Steve agrees—
“—but my point is, if I could drive, and if I was allowed to drive the Beamer, I would let you get so drunk at this potluck, and then I’d bundle you back home happy as a clam and it would be glorious.”
Steve scoffs at her, fondly. “Day-drinking isn’t my specialty.”
It’s Nancy’s.
Robin has been trying to ignore it since the summer. The first time she noticed it was at their graduation party, which must win an award for world’s most depressing celebration. Nancy didn’t seem like the type to hold her liquor, so Robin had raised her eyebrows, spidey-sense alert, when she saw Nancy Not-So-Priss Wheeler knock back three shots in half an hour.
No judgment or anything, vices fill the voids where virtues fear to tread, but…
Robin has occasionally allowed herself some gratitude for the structure that the crawls bring to their lives, like being fit and ready and focused is an end in and of itself. When they have a mission, Jonathan doesn’t smell like weed (much), and Nancy is a full teetotaler, and Steve, sure, is still addicted to loving Nancy but he doesn’t complain (much) about having to drive the van.
There’s no crawl on Christmas, though. There’s just Nancy, eyes too bright, lipstick a little smudged at the corner of her mouth (on the rim of her glass), in a black velvet dress that can’t possibly be warm enough.
She smells like whiskey.
“Robin!” She pulls Robin into a hug, hissing at the frosty touch of Robin’s snow-dusted mitten on her bare shoulder. “And Steve! Didn’t think you’d come.”
No hug for Steve. He takes that arrow without flinching, but Robin could swear she hears the bowstring snap.
“Merry Christmas, Nance,” he says. “You look nice.”
“I’m half-dressed,” she drawls, her smile not reaching her eyes. “Can’t find my fucking pink sweater fucking anywhere.”
“Language!” Ted shouts, from somewhere deep in the recesses of the Wheeler living room.
Nancy rolls her eyes. Her mascara’s a little smudged, too, like she did a post-crying cleanup. Which, oh Lord, Nancy.
She turns without another word and leads them inside.
“Mom! Robin and Steve are here!”
Karen Wheeler is also tipsy, but Robin’s gotten used to that as a fact of life much more easily than she has with Nancy. Karen is just… well, not a wino, that would be super rude and inconsiderate to suggest about the sainted mom of Robin’s friend(s), but she’s definitely a chardonnay expert. A pinot grigio expert. A…
“Hello, you two!” Karen says—slurs. She embraces them both in a hug, her half-full glass sloshing over Robin’s shoulder. Well, whatever. Robin didn’t wear her nicest sweater. “Robin! Cornbread! You’re an angel. And Steve, you’re looking well. How do you manage to keep your hair like that? Mine is fried—Nancy does it for me. And you do good, honey, you really do, I’m just hopeless.”
“Mom.” Nancy drains her own glass. Sets it down with a precise clink. Robin doesn’t like the fractured mirror image she sees in front of her. “I think you should check on the ham, yeah? Joyce doesn’t know how to baste to save her life.”
“Baste of space, am I right?” Steve cracks weakly, in that particular tone he gets when he knows the joke will fall flat before he finishes saying it.
Nancy stares at him for a brief, emotionless second, then switches to Robin.
“Make yourselves at home,” she says, and stalks away.
Steve throws his head back: the second arrow.
“Let’s find the kids,” he says, and Robin resists the urge to grab his hand because it doesn’t do to be too obvious about how much this already sucks, and also, she doesn’t like giving Karen any more ammunition to think that she and Steve are secretly dating.
Mike, Will, and Lucas are arranged shoulder to shoulder on the couch downstairs, with Holly reading in one corner and Erica standing aloof from all of them. Dustin, in his ubiquitous duster, is studying some kind of electronics manual on the floor beside the untidy heap of blankets and pillows that Jonathan and Will now call a bedroom.
“Hey, guys,” Lucas says.
Everyone else is silent.
“Uh, hi,” Robin says. “How’s it… going?”
“Fabulously,” says Erica. “Nice sweater, Steven. Did you come straight from family photos?”
“My parents are in Michigan,” Steve says. “But you know that, Sinclair-the-younger.”
“He just looks like that,” Mike grouses. “Even now.”
Not so much as a hello. Mike Wheeler in a bad mood is just the cherry-bomb on top of this toxic sundae.
Robin sighs, but Steve takes the bait.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Mike heaves himself forward, elbows on his knees. He looks up from under his eyebrows.
“It means that you look like a catalogue model, Steve. Which, I assume, is what you’re going for.”
“Mike…” Will murmurs.
“What? Just the facts.” Mike’s Erica imitation is startlingly accurate. She glares at him from across the room.
“Loser,” she mouths. Then, “Are we playing or what? I didn’t come over here to just sit in a miasma of basement stench while you people pick your noses.”
“Playing?” Robin asks. Steve has floated off in the direction of the bookshelves, apparently accepting defeat via Mike-Wheeler-backhanded-compliment.
“A campaign,” Lucas says. “But Dustin isn’t in.”
“I’m trying to do actual work,” Dustin mutters. “You know, for our actual job?”
“What job?” Holly pipes up.
“Nothing,” Mike snaps. He gets up, shakes himself. “We don’t have time for a campaign.”
“Mike…” Will says again.
“I don’t care what Hop said! We can make it work today.”
“Make what work?” Holly asks plaintively.
“Nothing,” Mike, Will, and Lucas say together.
This is about El, clearly. As far as Robin’s aware, there is a longstanding situation where, with the exception of the disastrous Lenora trip circa the Byers living in California, Mike’s relationship with El has been under a series of lock-and-key curfews, secret passcodes, and permission structures.
It grates on him. Wheelers don’t like being told what to do.
“Where’s Jonathan?” Robin asks, which is yet another bad idea. It’s not like she actually wants to talk to Jonathan. She just needs something to say.
“Outside with his best friend Mary Jane,” Will says, rolling his eyes.
“Who’s Mary Jane?” Holly asks.
Mike grips his hair with both hands. “Oh my God, Holly! Shouldn’t you be upstairs?”
“It’s a free basement,” Holly says, but Robin sees her chin wobble. Tears are in the forecast.
“Hey, Holly,” Steve says, giving Dustin a wide berth as he passes him. “Nancy was asking for you, actually. I think she needs help.”
It works like a charm, even though Dustin glances up suspiciously and Mike mutters something that, if Robin was in range, would probably warrant a sharp elbow to the ribs. Holly perks up and tucks her book under her arm, trotting up the stairs after Steve.
“You’d better go after him, Rob,” Dustin says. “Before Nance squashes his cranberries. She’s on the warpath today.”
“You’re a bunch of little shits, you know that?” Robin says, over her shoulder, which isn’t fair to Lucas or Will, but she can only do so much.
Upstairs, Nancy’s nowhere to be found. Steve consoles Holly with cornbread and makes a little more conversation with Karen. It’s a ghostly echo, Robin thinks, of how he probably used to fit here—elbows on the kitchen counter, heartthrob hair and boyfriend sweater. He could talk sports with Ted and charm Karen and seamlessly blend into the family pictures on the wall.
Robin, though? Robin has never fit into a place like this, and she certainly doesn’t now, when everything’s tilted as sideways as Joyce is tilting the ham platter. She doesn’t want to go through the motions like Steve does, like Nancy forces herself to do.
Can’t find my fucking pink sweater fucking anywhere.
Where is Nancy?
Robin has a hunch. She grabs her coat off the peg, slings it on, and heads out the front door.
Nancy’s standing a few feet down the snow-covered walkway, shivering.
A bomb in a black velvet dress.
Robin tries not to light the fuse.
“Nance?”
Nancy stiffens, but she doesn’t turn immediately. Her hands go to her face, and Robin gives her a few seconds for dignity.
“Hey, Robin.” Tears in her voice, tears on her face, but they can’t talk about that.
You think I’m not happy?
“It’s cold as Dante’s hell out here, Nance. What are you doing?”
“Waiting for Jonathan,” Nancy says, with a brittle smirk. “He’s just… finishing up.”
At the end of the driveway, half-hidden by the shrubs, Robin can make out a solitary figure, punctuated by the light of an orange ember.
“With Mary Jane,” Robin says, deciding to make light of it. “Righttt. Cheater.”
“I hate that bitch,” Nancy deadpans.
Robin pinches her nose. “Yeah, gross.”
The door bangs open.
PleaseDon’tBeStevePleaseDon’tBeStevePlease—
“Hey!”
It’s Steve.
“Jeez-us.” He draws it out. “It’s cold out here. What are you guys doing?”
“Watching for the Polar Express,” Robin says.
Steve bounds down the front step to stand beside Robin. “Uh… I think dinner’s ready.”
“I’ll just be a minute,” Nancy says. “You guys go ahead.”
There are snowflakes on her hair. On her bare arms, melting one by one against her skin, which gleams golden under the porchlight.
Steve lights the fuse.
“Nance, don’t be ridiculous, you’ll turn into an icicle.”
Normally, Robin would not be in a man’s corner for saying anything a woman does (up to and including some felonies) is ridiculous. But freezing to death while Jonathan Byers smokes a joint on Christmas afternoon is ridiculous, if anything is, and also—the way Steve says it? It’s all soft sincerity, nothing harsh about it.
Which is probably why Nancy can’t take it. She crosses her arms over her chest. Chin down, eyes up, danger zone.
“I said, I’ll just be a minute. Do you listen to anything I say?”
Robin’s a coward or else she’s graciously kind; either way, she doesn’t glance up at him to see how he takes it.
“Yeah,” he says, softer still. “Of course. I just…”
Don’t do it, Steve. Don’t offer her your sweater.
He doesn’t. Just makes one, aborted tug at his wrist like he’s plucking an arrow out of the sleeve.
“We just don’t want to start without you.”
“Did I ever tell you,” Robin asks, as they back out of the driveway, “that I hate ham?”
Steve’s quiet, accelerating up Maple Street. Thankfully the Highway Department survived the Rifts, so the plows have been through.
“I do. It’s just like—should a meat really be pink? All my life, my mom is like, it’s not done if it’s pink. But I guess that’s just poultry. We pretty much only eat poultry.”
“I should have offered the Sinclairs a ride,” Steve says. His voice is slightly hoarse.
“Oh, no, they’re fine. Erica said their dad was picking them up at five-thirty.”
“Oh. Guess I missed that.” Steve has one hand on the wheel now, thumb tapping restlessly. He palms his brow with the other. Pinches his nose.
“S’fine. We’re still on for Frank Capra tonight, right?”
“I don’t know, Rob—”
“You cannot ditch me, Harrington. I cannot sit through White Christmas one more time, no matter how much Mom needles me.”
He slides her a careful grin. “Right, see, this is how you get a little spoiled, TV in your room and everything. You think you can have a double feature in the Buckley house any time you want.”
“You have an in-ground pool. Don’t cast my luxuries up to me.” She nestles back in her seat, the empty cornbread plate sliding up her thighs and sending a few crumbs flying over the precious upholstery. “Oh, and don’t worry about curfew. You can bunk over.”
“You worried about me, Buckley?” Steve flicks his blinker on. “Don’t answer that.”
Robin bides her time. OK, maybe not by most people’s measure—but three days is an infinity by her clock. On Sunday, she radios Nancy and says that she needs a ride to Bradley’s Big Buy for office supplies. Since office supplies are Nancy’s purview—basically, everything they can still get for the station without waiting on Murray—Nancy bites.
Robin waits until they’re turning onto Mulberry before she says, very pleasantly,
“So, do you want to tell me what’s up with you?”
Wheeler death-glare, received and survived.
“What?”
“Don’t play dumb with me,” Robin says, poking an accusing finger into Nancy’s (sweater-clad, this time) shoulder. “You invited us over for Christmas and then everything was like, super weird and uncomfortable. Am I not allowed to ask how you’re doing?”
Because the day-drinking and unseasonal attire and the crying through your mascara is kind of freaking me out, and that’s not even approaching the whole Steve Elephant that lives perennially in this room.
Nancy stares down the road. She eases up on her lead foot only because there’s an MP that’s always waiting by the Hideaway.
“Just a bad day,” she says. “I’m sorry it was—weird and uncomfortable.”
“You didn’t seem like yourself,” Robin says.
Nancy laughs, humorlessly. “Maybe just a side of me you haven’t met yet.”
“OK, well now I have, and like—what’s up with her?”
“I don’t know!” Nancy lets out a huff of frustration. “Christmas has just been—shitty for like, the last four years, obviously, and I thought it would help if we had a big crowd instead of a… middle-sized crowd, and I just—it didn't, and I get that now. I got it halfway through, so I…”
“Started drinking?” Robin braces herself for an arrow of her own.
It doesn’t come. Nancy deflates slightly. Shakes her head, like she’s lost in her own thoughts.
“Never stopped,” she says.
“I’m not judging you.”
“Aren’t you?” A sidelong glance, less a glare, more a question. Target: aligned.
“Not for drinking. It’s a stressful time. But—c’mon, Nance. You were kind of less than a welcoming hostess.”
A beat of silence. The Elephant in the room marches in, great hair present and accounted for.
“I’m a bitch when I’m drunk.” The white lines of Nancy’s profile are sharp with misery. “Steve knows that better than anyone.”
“OK, so.” Robin blows out her breath. Normally she’s big on the whole, I don’t let anyone talk about my friends that way, including my friends themselves, but that whole self-help routine has never worked too well with Nancy. “I’m not judging that either, really. Just like—can you please be a little more mindful of where you point the bitch-cannon at?”
“The bitch-cannon?”
“You know what I mean.” He doesn’t deserve to be your punching bag. He’d do anything for you and you know it. Hell, that’s why you’re so fucking scared, Nance. You don’t know what to do with the fact that he could change your life.
“I’m sorry.”
“You weren’t mean to me.”
“Tell Steve I’m sorry.”
“Tell him yourself.”
Nancy rolls her eyes. “Are you this annoying with him?”
“Ten times more so, actually.” Robin puts one sneaker up on the dash, decides she can’t survive that glare, and drops it down again.
“My goodness,” Nancy says, because she’s still a little bit of a priss, in a lovable way, and she says my goodness on occasion.
“I have to imagine,” Robin says, picking her way through the landmine she’s learned to know pretty well—or maybe it’s a graveyard, where Nancy buries those lost pieces of herself—“that the middle-sized crowd can still feel kind of zooey at times. You’re always welcome at the Squawk, you know. Not just for Serious Business.”
They’ve pulled into the parking lot of Bradley’s. Nancy turns the ignition off. Her lips twitch, and she stares down—at the steering wheel, at her lap, at some memory Robin can’t see.
“How is he doing?” she asks, velvet-soft.
“He’s Steve,” says Robin, and is cowardly enough, or gracious enough, to pretend not to see the tears in Nancy’s eyes.