Archive of Our Own

When Lou Buckley gets the call from his niece on a sleepy Sunday afternoon, he can’t say he isn’t surprised, but it’s a pleasant one.

“I was wondering - I wanted to ask if - well, my friends and I were wanting someplace to meet up once a month, just like for a weekend, and we were wondering if we would come stay with you? It’s kind of complicated, see, because-” Lou politely waits for Robin to finish her spiel, complete with loop-backs and tangents, fiddles with the twirls of the phone cord whilst he listens to her talk. He doesn’t need to hear it, though, because he said yes in his mind three minutes back.

Lou has three nephews and two nieces, and ok, so maybe he’s not supposed to have favorites, but what’s a little preferential treatment amongst family? Plus, she was the first. Technically Larry was the first born kid, the new generation of Buckleys, but Lou’s brother Phil and his wife Suz had been living way out in LA, and a flight to Indianapolis was way too far for a newborn, so when Richard’s daughter was born six weeks later, just a car ride away, Larry was all but forgotten, and a squirming, red-faced baby was plonked unceremoniously into sixteen-year-old Lou’s arms. 

All this to say that he held Robin first, a lifetime ago, so maybe that forms a link that can’t be superseded by any of his siblings’ other kids. 

Or, maybe, the bond came later, the first big family Thanksgiving, the first and last time Lisa - next Buckley sibling up from Lou - was allowed to make the gravy unsupervised. There was some distracting magazine, Lisa looking away too long, and then the kitchen curtains were erupting into flames, spreading quickly through seventies polyester, sending the smoke alarm shrieking and the whole family into a panic. Maybe that bond was formed when Richard all but tossed his small daughter to the calmest looking person in the room - his youngest brother Lou, half asleep and fully bewildered - and instructed them in no uncertain terms to get outside now. Lou had, of course, whilst the adults dashed around inside trying to prevent an accident from becoming a tragedy, and sat on the front stoop of the old house his parents would sell just four years later, swapping it for a Florida retirement community Lou tries to visit once a year. 

It had snowed, the air the kind of cold that makes breath hold its shape in the air for a beat, and Lou wrapped up the baby in his jacket, balanced her along his knees, and with the backdrop of the chaos in the only home he’d ever known behind him, her big round infant eyes had tugged the horrible truth from him. The thing he’d admitted to himself a handful of months ago, told nobody, cried himself to sleep about. The knot in his stomach that threatened to spill from him like acrid vomit every time he opened his mouth. 

In a single breath, he told his tiny niece that he was built wrong. That he loved wrong. Boys, not girls. And after that it all came up, the knowledge that if he was untrue to himself he’d live a kind of half life, that he wasn’t sure he could stand it, but if he was honest with himself then he’d never get the kind of cookie-cutter life his mother wanted for him. The kind of life his siblings slipped into so easily. He’d never get the wedding ring on his left hand. He’d never get this, his own little baby blinking up at him. 

And he hadn’t figured out what he wanted yet, but to have so many doors closed in his face before he’d even graduated from high school? Well, that just didn’t seem fair. 

Robin was a good listener, babbling something back in baby speak, and the smoke alarm finally stopped screeching, and Lou knew that Richard would materialise any second, swoop the baby back. But Lou could take a breath. He’d told somebody, and the word hadn’t stopped spinning. So maybe he’d never have the wife and the two-point-five children, but he supposed he could always have this. Uncle Lou. 

So maybe that would be enough. 

So, even though Robin has no idea - none of his family do, think he’s married to his career and the big Philly fixer-upper he lives in by himself, no time for romance - he kind of feels like he owes her. And he does love his job, and his house is pretty neat, but it’s also big, and empty, and sometimes it gets kind of lonely. So of course, Lou tells her yes.

*

Lou plays the perfect host, greeting Robin’s friends and providing cups of coffee and a plate of sandwiches, but at the same time he watches them closely, fighting not to drown in the memories of being twenty, hitting his stride at college, finding other kids like him for the first time, figuring it all out. These kids seem different, and maybe it’s just the youth of today, but he drops a pan on the floor of the kitchen whilst he’s putting dishes away and when it clatters to the tile, all four of them jump out of their seats like they’ve heard a gunshot. They stick close together, fiercely protective, some far away haunted look in their eyes like too many of Lou’s friends, some of whom have to leave town every fourth of July because the fireworks bring back memories of Vietnam, always looking over their shoulders. 

The most interesting thing, though, is the dynamic. There’s no way Lou, who majored in Psychology and whose guilty pleasure is the stash of celebrity gossip magazines he keeps stacked in his closet, isn’t going to be fascinated by them. Lou is in his late thirties, hasn’t had a steady boyfriend since the other end of the decade, works a sixty hour week in advertising, lives alone, and finds that as his friends all get older too, the once thriving club scene and exciting close-knit community he felt like a valued part of is turning into dinner parties and fucking wine tasting nights. He’s not too proud to admit that, ok, maybe he needs a little drama. 

At first, he assumes Robin is dating the boy with the big hair, and a tiny part of him is disappointed, because he had thought, maybe, for a time, that she was… but, no. This kind of life is difficult. It’s ok that it’s just him.

The big-haired one - Steve - Lou thinks, is the first to arrive, pulls up in some beat up old car that should never have made it out of the seventies, and he and Robin crash into one another like one of them is returning from war, Steve’s hand in her hair, her face pressed into the crook of his neck. It feels private, too much to intrude on, so Lou looks away from the front window and busies himself kicking the crooked baseboard back into place. He fully expects Robin to introduce Steve as her boyfriend, but she doesn’t, and hey, maybe it’s just early days for them, something secret, just for the two of them. They sit close together on the couch that evening, thighs and arms pressed tight, her hair dropping to his shoulder when the movie the other girl - pretty, short waves, a little reserved - picked lulls, and Lou’s sure of it, that by the time they come back next month Steve’s official title will have changed to boyfriend.

But then October rolls in, all chilly air and crunchy leaves, and there’s another bone-crushing hug between the two of them on the driveway but no update, and that evening whilst Lou’s getting ready for a dinner date - some guy named Tad, a friend of a friend, an insurance job that sounds steady and sensible but mind-numbingly boring - he overhears Steve on the landline to somebody he calls baby, and instantly feels some kind of uncle-y protective rage for Robin. Steve’s clearly cheating on her, or else cheating on the girl on the other end of the line, stringing one or both of them along, and his brilliant niece deserves better. Does Robin even know? Should he tell her? He’s made his mind up to, storms into the kitchen only to find the other kids sitting at the table, not ten feet away from Steve, Robin mocking Steve’s hushed ‘I love you’s’ with fake puke noises, her feet up in the other boy’s lap - the one with the video camera and a slightly pretentious aesthetic. Jonathan, Lou remembers. So, maybe, he’s got it all wrong. 

*

November’s visit has Lou realising there’s definitely some weird energy between Jonathan and Nancy, too. Something lingering there, just beneath the surface. Lou picks up on it as he lines up for the bathroom one Saturday evening - because sure it’s his house, but he’s polite, ok, and it’s his fault he hasn’t gotten around to fixing up any of the other two bathrooms that should be available to guests. Nancy steps out, having brushed her teeth in record time, and it’s Jonathan who stops her with a gentle hand on her shoulder.

“You have, uh-” he gestures to the little smear of dried fake (Lou hopes) blood on her chin from their shooting earlier, laughs softly as she tries to wipe it away with a sleeve and misses spectacularly, “no, can I-?”

“Sure,” she huffs, and he swipes at it with his thumb, gets it in one, complete with intense eye contact. 

Lou clears his throat, loudly, mainly because it feels so charged and awkward to witness, and Nancy scurries away to the bedroom she shares with Robin.

He asks her about it the next morning on a coffee and bagel run, walking the two blocks back to the house.

“So are Nancy and Jonathan… you know, do they have something going on?” Lou asks, no preamble.

Robin chokes on her cream cheese and lox, “w-what? No. No, definitely not,” she says, eyes widening. “They, uh, they used to. For a long time, actually, but no - not anymore. They’re ancient history.”

“Oh, shit,” Lou muses, “exes, huh?”

“Very much so,” Robin snickers, like she knows something.

“So, what, is it you two?” Lou asks, doesn’t miss the deer-in-headlights look his niece shoots back, “you and Jonathan?”

“Oh!” She relaxes, bursting into laughter instead, “God, no, Uncle Lou. No, no, no.” And Lou has the distinct impression he’s missing something. Robin hesitates for a beat, opens her mouth, takes a breath, closes it again, meets Lou’s eyes, looks back at her bagel. A police siren starts up somewhere down the street. The moment passes, and whatever was on the tip of Robin’s tongue is swallowed with the next bite of bagel. 

*

December sees the kids begging Lou to take up the part of an extra in Jonathan’s film. Lou has mostly stayed out of the way of filming up until now, found things around the house or out on the streets of Philly to occupy his time instead. Things with Tad are going surprisingly well, and on Friday night they go and see a movie, sit in Tad’s car for an hour talking about nothing and everything before Lou is deposited in front of his home in the freezing winter air, opens his front door to peals of laughter from the basement, breathes a sigh of relief that it’s not the sour ache of silence. 

“You’re going to be playing the concept of capitalism,” Jonathan explains, hands Lou a script, “you ever acted before?”

“I did some theatre in high school,” Lou says, deciding not to question the whackness of the role he’s been given,“but that was, like, twenty years ago.”

He doesn’t miss the worried glance Jonathan shoots Robin. “He’ll be great,” she hisses, “just be yourself, Uncle Lou. But, y’know, grittier.”

“And don’t fall on your face halfway through the first take, like somebody we know did,” Steve adds, dodging a well-aimed kick from Robin.

“Did I or did I not nail it on the second take, Dingus?”

“Children, children,” Nancy appears from somewhere with an eyeshadow palette and a wide brush, “if I wanted to hear siblings fighting, I’d just go home,” she says, and then the world is lost from Lou’s eyes as he scrunches them shut against the onslaught of Nancy painting powder in various shades of purple over his right eye. 

They shoot for almost five hours, which Lou suspects is largely down to his own difficulties in taking direction, being able to tell his lefts from his rights, and / or being able to nail the appropriate level of anguish apparently required to embody the depth of capitalism as a concept, but by late afternoon his role is announced as ‘finished enough’, and he’s allowed to rush upstairs to clean his face and take off the itchy wool suit he’s been squished into. 

It’s when he’s leaving his bedroom that he stumbles past something interesting. The door to Robin and Nancy’s shared guest room is wide open, so it doesn’t count as snooping when something inside catches his eye and he turns to find both girls pressed together in front of the vanity, taking off their own makeup from today’s scenes. 

They’re chatting about something, some rewrite they want Jonathan to make, when both girls reach for a tube on the dresser in front of them. Lou watches as their hands meet, and instead of drawing back like he’d expect, they hover. The girls stop speaking abruptly, both look down at their hands, Robin’s fingers splayed over the top of Nancy’s, both look up, eyes meeting in the mirror, the moment laced with something that Lou can’t quite identify, but then Robin’s breath catches and she has to clear her throat, and their hands both drop to their sides like cut marionette strings, and Lou shakes his head, tells himself that he’s an old man finding something where there’s nothing, heads downstairs to eat before his drinks date with Tad. 

*

Lou flies out to Indianapolis for Christmas, spends the holiday on an air mattress on the floor of Lisa’s study. It’s a big one this year, with Lou’s parents flying in from Florida and Richard, Melissa and Robin making the trip from Hawkins for a couple nights too. Lou is hit with the same odd combination of joy at being around his family, and a weird shameful melancholy because he knows he’ll never be able to be himself around them. Times may be changing, slowly but surely, but Lou knows that his parents, at least, still voted red in last years’ election, and every conversation with them is still always peppered with questioning about why he isn’t married yet, when is he getting married, doesn’t he want to find a nice girl to settle down with? 

He bats off the questions with vague, non-committal answers, because he knows that if he ever told the truth, his family would see him differently, and he would no longer be welcome for Buckley holidays at all. It’s difficult to hold that truth alongside the other one, which is that very simply put, he loves his family, and he doesn’t think that they’re bad people, not in their hearts. 

All that to say, Lou’s feelings about being home for the holidays are complicated.

This year, though, it seems he’s not the only one with an overbearing mother. Melissa seems hellbent on grilling Robin at every opportunity she gets, including across the breakfast table on Christmas morning. 

“His name’s Mitchell,” Melissa is explaining, trying to sell Robin on the son of one of her coworkers or something, “he goes to Indiana State on a football scholarship! He wants to be a teacher. Now that’s a steady job, Robin. Why don’t you just let me set you up on a date, just once, while you’re home?”

Robin’s panicked, weary eyes meet his across the table, and then quickly duck away, suddenly finding the wood grain of Lisa’s breakfast table very interesting, “no thanks, Mom. I’m busy, I don’t think I have time, and I have so much studying to do, so you know how it is?”

“Oh, Robin,” Melissa rolls her eyes, “you don’t want to end up all alone like Uncle Lou now, do you?” Melissa chides, and it hits Lou like a gut punch, because Melissa’s not wrong - Lou is alone in the traditional sense, and sometimes his home feels too big for him, an ill-fitting coat that he drowns in, but he wouldn’t think of himself as a lonely person. It’s just that all of the best parts of his life are the ones he has to keep hidden from his family, so that the only parts they wind up hearing about are the quiet ones he spends alone. 

Lou is ready to wave off Melissa’s comment, laugh along with the rest of the family like he normally does, the youngest kid, never taken seriously, always a bit of a joke, but Robin isn’t having any of it, meets his eyes again, defiant this time - “I’d be lucky to wind up like Uncle Lou,” she says, and then she’s pushing away from the table and making herself scarce.

Lou finds her five minutes later on Lisa’s front stoop, and it’s not the house he grew up in but it’s only a mile away, feels so familiar that it kind of makes his chest ache, and if he shuts his eyes he’s sixteen again and the whole world feels like it’s going to close in on him. 

But decades have passed, and Lou’s lived a whole life, sits down next to Robin on the top step instead of wrapping her in his jacket. They sit in the quiet for a moment, Lou a quiet support, until Robin says with a sniff, “maybe I’ll come spend Christmas with you next year, Uncle Lou,” and Lou squeezes her arm and when he says that he’d like that very much, he means it.

*

The melancholy clings to Robin when she shows up again in late January. She shrugs Lou off when he checks in, asks very seriously if everything is ok, if her mom is bothering her again. 

“She’s always bothering me,” Robin huffs, “but everything’s good. I’m doing great.” He doesn’t believe her, of course, and maybe in September he might’ve just assumed that this was how she was, but he’s been seeing her regularly for five months now, and there’s a spark of something in her missing. She’s still jumpy, has been the whole time (this time it’s a car backfiring outside that makes her wobbly; last month it was a large dog growling outside at night which sent all four kids looking like they were waiting to be led to their executions), but there’s something else now, too, and she wears it heavy. 

He even checks with Steve that night, grabbing a quick word with him in the hallway. Lou’s established that they definitely aren’t an item, but he’s pretty sure anyone with eyes would be able to tell that they love each other. Steve seems to be the one she’s closest to, and Lou’s gotten to know him better over the past months, knows he’s a coach with a soft heart and a good head on his shoulders. So all in all, he seems like the right guy to ask.

“Have you noticed anything going on with Robin?” Lou whispers, hoping that none of the other kids will hear him over the rabble that is a Quantum Leap rerun on the TV. “She seems quiet. I know her mother was ragging on her over Christmas. Melissa can be like a dog with a bone, but if she needs for me to have a word with her father, I mean, I guess I can do that,” Lou decides in the moment that, despite never having ‘had a word’ with a single member of his family in his life, for his niece, he could do it. 

“Oh,” Steve’s eyes widen, “no, you-you don’t need to do that Mr Buckley.”

“Lou, please,” Lou says, for what must be the two-hundredth time. Damn these kids and their insistent respect. Lou’s not even two decades older than them for God’s sakes.

“Lou. Lou, right,” Steve nods, “Rob’s just, uh-” he reaches up, rubs a hand along his browbone, “she’s dealing with some stuff. Nothing to do with her family - your, uh, your brother. Her parents. It’s just g - school stuff. College stresses, y’know?”

Lou frowns, never having heard a less convincing argument, but knowing, nonetheless, when he’s being asked, in a roundabout way, to drop something. 

He does, because he knows that some things just aren’t his place, but the niggle that something just isn’t right only grows stronger when he hears snatches of a whisper-shouted argument between Robin and Nancy outside their bedroom door - which, of course, happens to be right beside Lou’s - in the middle of the night. He can’t pick out too many words through the two inches of oak that make up said door, but he does hear a few key words - a grumbled ‘different’, a hissed ‘you said that you-’, an accusatory ‘you were lying’, and finally a broken, and louder, ‘didn’t even want to start this in the first place.’

The bedroom door shuts with a soft click not long after, and Lou lies awake for another hour, questions turning over and over in his head, a burning sadness for both girls, a worry over whether maybe this could be the end of their friendship. He hopes beyond hope that it isn’t.

The next morning they are frosty and cordial with each other, but Lou doesn’t ask, beyond checking as they leave whether they still want to come back in a month.

“Of course,” Robin says, “if you’ll have us, that is?”

“No doubt about it.”

*

February’s weekend coincides with a getaway Tad has planned to some cottage upstate, so Lou leaves a key under the mat and a well-stocked refrigerator, has a beautiful weekend with a man he loves in a secluded location where they’re free to be themselves, and comes home to a note from all four of them thanking Lou for his hospitality. He rolls his eyes affectionately - what is he, a guest house host? - and feels oddly sad that he missed their visit. 

When Robin arrives again in March, it’s immediately obvious that she’s doing better. It’s her birthday month, and Lou has a cake in the refrigerator and a case of beers chilling in the salad crisper, so he’s relieved to see her almost skipping up to the front door. 

“Had a better month, huh?”

“Oh, yeah,” Robin smiles, settling across the dining table from him, “I went to visit Nancy over Spring Break,” she says, nibbles at her bottom lip, biting back a smile, in the exact way Lou would when he used to talk about his college - 

Oh. The suspicion is back. 

“Oh yeah?” Lou asks, tries to be subtle about it, knows just how carefully he has to tread, “and that was - you had a good time there, huh?”

Robin sighs, almost dreamily, “yeah. Yeah it - I’m going to go stay with her for a little bit once college is out for the summer.”

“Not going home?”

Robin’s face turns down immediately, and Lou feels like a piece of shit for bringing up a topic he knew might be hard for Robin. On her birthday weekend, of all times. 

“I think I maybe need a little space from my parents,” she says carefully, “just - just for a little bit.”

“Hey,” Lou demands her attention, needs her to know that he’s serious when he says what he has to say, “I get it. Nobody gets it more than I do, trust me,” he says, “and if you ever need to talk. I… I’ve been there, actually. So I’m here, anytime. For anything,” he promises, and he doesn’t know if Robin is - is like him or not, tells himself that she’s probably not, that whatever she has going on is probably a hundred miles away from whatever he’s thinking, but it’s worth it to say, just on the off chance, so that she knows she has somebody in her corner. Lou is giving her some pretty words but the real meaning lives between the lines, there for her to see right underneath the words he’s actually saying. If they speak the same language, it’ll be plain for her to see. If not, no harm, no foul.

Robin meets his eye, holds it for a beat too long, like she’s trying her best to look into his soul. Like she’s looking for something kindred in him, something she recognises. Lou, opposite her, is doing the exact same thing. 

Neither of them quite find the safety to say what they mean. Not yet.

But, even so, there’s an understanding. 

Lou watches Robin and Nancy closely as the weekend unfolds, but if there’s anything there, the girls are careful with it, treat it like the fragile thing that it is. The film is almost done, apparently, all edited together aside from a couple scenes that need reshooting, but Robin is quick to assure Lou that they’ll keep coming here every month, if it’s ok with him, the habit having become a pillar of each of their lives, neither of them wanting to go back to a life without each other. Though he doesn’t say it, Lou isn’t sure he’s ready to go back to the only person other than him crossing his threshold of his home being the odd hookup who’ll be gone before he wakes up, or else a handyman whose name he’ll have forgotten before the day is out. 

They celebrate Robin turning twenty-two on Saturday night, and Lou invites over Tad under the guise of a friend, and the six of them split the cake and the case of Bud and Jonathan produces a little baggie of joints which the four men smoke on the back step, Tad teaching them how to blow smoke rings out into the Spring breeze. Lou is first back in, stops in his tracks in the entryway to the living room, finds Nancy and Robin squished at one end of the couch. If they moved their arms, they’d be snuggling, but as it is they’re just sitting very close together, foreheads almost touching, speaking so low that Lou can’t quite catch what they’re saying. It’s something private, just for them, and he feels even worse for witnessing this than he did watching any of Steve and Robin’s moments, or the fake-blood incident between Jonathan and Nancy outside of the bathroom. 

The back door clicks shut and the others are not too far behind Lou, but the girls don’t seem to have noticed, so Lou panics and drops his beer to cause a distraction. It makes all four kids jump - because of course it does - but Nancy and Robin spring apart, and to their knowledge, nobody is any the wiser of their little moment on the couch. 

*

April sees Lou finally getting the house’s rewiring fixed up. He has a contractor out, but it’s the cheapest guy in the yellow pages and the work drags on and on, and by the middle of the month Lou has lost complete faith in any of the light switches to work. He doesn’t think to warn the kids of this - doesn’t see a reason to - but the power decides to unceremoniously flicker off sometime after nine p.m on Friday night, and the change in the room’s mood is palpable. Nancy gasps, Jonathan stands up from his chair, eyes darting around, Steve moves to stand in front of the girls, and Robin goes deathly still. The lights flash once, twice, three times before seeming to decide to commit to being on, and Lou finds Robin and Nancy sitting with their hands so tightly intertwined that their knuckles are bone-white.

“A - I’m getting the wiring fixed,” Lou explains, gesturing vaguely to the ceiling, “it’s been doing this.”

The kids visibly deflate, “shit, Lou,” Steve exclaims. 

“I didn’t realise it would be a big deal?” Lou frowns.

“No it’s not - it’s really - it’s not a big deal, Uncle Lou,” Robin assures him, but she’s still holding Nancy’s hand, only dropping it when she sees Lou’s eyes slide over their tangled fingers. He wants to tell her to stop, that they don’t have to let go on his account.

“I think we’re all just a little jumpy,” Jonathan says, tries to play it off like it’s a joke, but nobody’s laughing.

The weird electricity must have had more of an impact on the kids than Lou had thought, because when he traipses downstairs before eight the next morning he finds Robin and Nancy at the kitchen table, blankets around their shoulders, each clutching a mug of tea and looking like they’ve recently been rescued from a disaster zone. 

Robin has her arm around Nancy, holds her close like she’s something precious. This time she doesn’t jump away when Lou walks in, immediately making himself known, not wanting to skulk.

His eyes ask a question that Robin is, apparently, ready to answer. It’s not the one he perhaps wants to know the answer to most, but it’s the most pressing one, given the circumstances. It’s the one he needs answers to, the behaviour of four kids who, for all he knows, have lived pretty sheltered small town lives up until this point, not adding up.

“How much do you know about what happened in Hawkins?” Robin asks.

“There was an earthquake?” Lou recalls. There was some business with the government too, some quarantine thing, but Richard had assured the family he was fine, that the quarantine was just a precaution, and Lou was in line for a promotion that year and had an on-again off-again thing going with a beautiful man named Hector, so maybe he didn’t pay as much attention to things as he should have. 

“It was a little more than that,” says Nancy, swallows, picks at a loose thread on her blanket. “We can tell you. But you might not believe us.”

Lou, who isn’t sure how anybody could doubt the terrified expressions of the young women in front of him, whose very joyful existence is something which so many hateful people in his country would not believe was possible, leans forward in his seat, and implores Nancy and Robin to try him. 

They do.

It takes all morning, in fits and starts, the boys joining in before nine. There are tears and moments of laughter; scars are shown off; a little stack of photos is produced by Jonathan. Lou is subject to a retelling of a work of fiction, surely, some other film Jonathan is working on, or else something Nancy’s writer brother has thought up. They talk of another dimension, monsters, a lab experimenting on a little girl who grew up to become something more powerful than anybody could imagine. Guns and nail-filled baseball bats and twelve kidnapped children. It’s ridiculous, every word of it.

And Lou doesn’t doubt it for a second. 

“Robin,” he gapes when they’re done, rounds the table to scoop up his niece in a hug, “Jesus Christ. Do - do your parents know about this?”

“No,” she shakes her head, “and they never will.” It’s a half-hearted threat, but it isn’t necessary. Lou needs them to know that he’s somebody they can trust.

“Mine do,” Nancy sniffs, “or at least, my mom does.”

“And mine,” Jonathan admits, pulls out one of the photos, a small dark-haired woman who kind of resembles the Beetlejuice girl and looks like she could kick Lou’s ass with her pinky finger. 

“Shit,” is all Lou can say, “have you guys - I mean, are you in therapy?” Of all of the questions, it seems like this one is maybe the most important. It can’t be sustainable, living with this huge amount of trauma, nowhere to put it. 

“Who could we tell?” Robin shakes her head sadly. “We’re doing better. More good days than bad.”

“We have each other,” Nancy says, “we have this,” she gestures at the people around the table. Robin and Jonathan and Steve and Nancy and Lou, too, who whether he likes it or not, is a part of this now. He might be closer to their parents’ ages and maybe he’s just Robin’s weird uncle who lets them use his house on weekends, but Lou feels like he’s part of something. Like for the first time in a long time, his family want him around, and don’t expect him to be anybody but himself. 

*

The knowledge of a whole dimension opening up underneath the sleepy town Lou’s brother lives in rocks his world for a little bit. He calls Robin five times over the month that follows, having thought of a question or a clarification, wanting to check in with her at the same time. She assures her she’s fine each time, asks how he is, says that she’s had much, much longer to process what happened. On their fifth phone call, she has news - Lou is invited to New York city, to Jonathan’s college, to a showing of his film.

“It did, like, super well with his professors I guess,” she says, “not that I doubted it would - it’s full of the kind of pretentious shit those guys eat up. But I kind of think my incredible acting talent had a role to play in that, y’know?”

Lou leaves the conversation laughing, makes plans to head to the city at the end of the month. He’s allowed a plus one, so of course he invites Tad, who accepts excitedly. They decide to make a long weekend of it, drive up early Friday and do the kind of touristy, cliche shit Lou would find sickening with anybody but Tad, who could surely make watching paint dry into something fun. 

The event takes place at some NYU event hall, and though Lou is excited to watch the film, of course, the most exciting thing happens when he and Tad walk in and find the kids grouped near the entrance with two other people - veritable celebrities to Lou, after what he heard last week.

“Lou!” Jonathan waves him over, “this is my mom and step dad.”

Lou isn’t one to gush. Sometimes he meets some pretty important people thanks to his career, and once worked with a brand for whom Tom Cruise was doing a campaign, and had been present at some event or another. Lou had barely raised an eyebrow, and had held an entire conversation with him about his favorite type of canapé, but this? 

This is a whole different ballgame. 

If the kids’ stories are to be believed - and Lou likes to operate on a policy of believing somebody wholeheartedly until there’s hard evidence to suggest otherwise - then this woman has crawled through hell to get her kid - Jonathan’s brother - back; helped to raise the girl with superpowers; axed the head off of the mastermind behind the whole thing. The man with one arm around her has been through a similar quagmire of shit, and the way Lou sees it, he wouldn’t be standing here without either of them, because the entire freaking planet would have ceased to exist.

Tad, however, knows none of this, and sharply elbows Lou, who is gaping at them and very much ignoring Jim Hopper’s outstretched hand.

“Gosh,” Lou breathes, shakes the offered hand, “sorry. Uh - I - long day, you know how it is. Lou Buckley. Pleasure to meet you.”

“Jim Hopper,” says The Jim Hopper.

“So you’re the one who’s been housing them whilst they make this film, huh?” Joyce asks, shakes Lou’s hand with a bright smile.

“Y-yes. Yeah! They’ve been a pleasure to have, Mrs Byers.”

“Call me Joyce, please,” says The Joyce Byers, “and I’m glad to hear it. I think they really needed this. So thank you.”

“No,” Lou shakes his head, “thank you.”

Joyce looks a smidge confused. Tad looks like he’s entered a whole other dimension himself, where nothing makes sense. They take their seats, and Lou is saved from having to sit Tad down and explain that the world nearly ended.

The film is beautiful, though maybe a little confusing in places, and Lou laughs and cries along with the audience; cringes when his part comes up - he’s definitely not going to get booked for another gig anytime soon - and joins in the standing ovation at the end with joy. The best part, though, comes after, where Jonathan has edited together a little behind-the-scenes reel to Supertramp’s ‘Give a Little Bit’, and to Lou, it’s basically a highlights reel of the past seven months the kids have been hanging at his house, and a clear expression of how much the kids all love each other. He feels distinctly lucky, in that moment, to have been let in, to be somebody that maybe his niece considers important. The man he wanted to be, sitting on that stoop in the snow on Thanksgiving all those years ago. 

The kids head out into the city after, and though Joyce and Jim beg off, citing a long day of travel tomorrow, Lou and Tad are implored to come. Lou thinks that they might just be asking him out of politeness, gives the excuse that he’s much too old to be heading out to a club at the big hour of eleven p.m, to which Tad - four years older - rolls his eyes and points out that thirty-eight isn’t even close to ancient, and the kids agree, which is how Lou finds himself reliving his twenties, moving amongst a mass of bodies on a dimly lit, sticky floor in the small hours of the morning. 

They wind up at some club in Soho, all pink strobes and a bassline so heavy that Lou can feel it rattling his bones. It’s the kind of place where, were the kids not there, he’d feel he could be himself. A quick glance shows him all kinds of people here, all free to be themselves - somebody in a tight leather skirt and a handlebar mustache; people dressed in grunge and streetwear; two girls with shaved heads making out in the corner. 

At this point, Lou doesn’t even think the kids would care if they saw him and Tad, kissing like those girls or else dancing together. He hasn’t seen anything to suggest otherwise anyway, but there’s still the old little voice in the back of his head telling him not to get caught, by any means. Some swathes of the world feel like they’re becoming more accepting, but elsewhere, it’s scarier than ever to be a gay man. Lou has lived a double life for more than twenty years. He’s pretty sure he’ll be looking over his shoulder for the rest of his life, doesn’t know if he’ll ever have the confidence to tell his parents the truth, is almost certain he’ll never be able to have a wedding, worries everyday about who would tell Tad and his friends if anything happened to him, because his family sure as hell wouldn’t.

Mid-crisis, though, Lou looks up and sees something that steals his breath. The pink strobes catch on Robin’s cheekbones, the sheen of her hair, the sheen of the person next to her’s hair. The person dancing with her, dancing close, arms around each other’s waists, faces close together. He’d recognise those short curls anywhere. Nancy. Whilst everything else Lou’s witnessed between them could probably be explained away, there’s really no heterosexual explanation for this. And there, in the middle of the dance floor, Lou feels a hundred things at once. There’s a little bit of pride, because Robin’s being exactly who she is; some joy, because falling in love is always beautiful; and a little bit of sadness, because Lou wouldn’t trade being queer for anything even if he could, but yes, right now that’s a harder life to lead. 

But mostly, for the first time in twenty-two years, Lou Buckley stops feeling alone. On Planet Buckley, anyway, he has been an outsider for over two decades, forced to hide most of who he is to suit the palettes of the ones who he had thought would love him unconditionally. 

The room he’s locked himself in for so long has always been empty. 

But for the first time, the door just opened. 

*

They don’t get a chance to talk until June’s visit, both having had busy months. It’s the last visit scheduled for a while, with school being out for the year and the kids having plans. Lou has his own summer plans, including a week on the French Riviera with Tad and a couple days back in his old stomping grounds in Paris. 

But, first, there’s a conversation he needs to have.

Robin and Nancy show up together this time, being that they’re living together right now, but after a quick chat, Nancy heads to take a shower, says she feels ‘travel icky’, and Lou takes his chance, sitting around the white metal table in his little backyard. It’s a beautiful June, the sun warming his very bones, the Faulkner kids two doors down shrieking under the droplets from the sprinkler, old man Barnes across the street mowing his front lawn. Background noise of a Philly summer afternoon.

“How’re things?” Lou asks, takes a sip of the ice cold lemonade he’d stashed in his freezer this morning, “is living with Nancy going well?”

Robin ducks her head, bites back a smile, “things are - things are pretty good right now, Uncle Lou,” she says, and her cheeks pinken, and Lou can’t help but beam back at her.

Fuck it. He has to just ask. “Is Nancy your girlfriend, Rob?”

Robin freezes, the smile sliding off of her face like she’s been slapped. Lou hurries to reassure her, never wanting to see that dread in her eyes again, “because it’s ok if she is! Believe me, Robin, it’s ok. I-” Lou opens and closes his mouth like a fish, suddenly unable to get out the words he was about to say. How do you break a two-decades old silence? It feels like breaking the lock on an ancient curse. But his niece’s scared eyes blink back at him, just the same as they did the first time, and he realises that he isn’t telling her anything new. She already knows. Somewhere, way back in her baby memory banks, inaccessible for Grown Adult Robin, there is the recollection of his very first confession. The one that kicked off the rest of his life. 

So, Lou takes a deep breath, and he repeats himself. “I’m gay, Robin. I’ve known for a very long time. Most of the people in my life know, and they love me for it. Tad? He’s my boyfriend. And my life is full and wonderful, and I want you to - I want you to know that you can have that too. I want you to be happy, kid. So whether Nancy’s your girlfriend or your friend or your something-in-between, that’s ok,” Lou nods, feels the burn of tears at the backs of his eyes, finds Robin’s already shining with them.

“Maybe I wondered a little bit,” Robin whispers, sniffs, “not because - not in a way that any of the other adults in the family would have noticed, Uncle Lou, I don’t want you to - I just… maybe I saw myself in you, a - a little bit.”

“Right back at you,” Lou laughs softly, and Robin echoes him, and when she hugs him, Lou breathes a little easier than he has in a long time.

“Nancy is my girlfriend,” Robin nods, sits back down, “but it hasn’t been easy. I’ve known about myself for a while, but she - it was kind of all new to her. But that’s ok, I..” she bites at the corner of her lip, eyes far away for a moment, “I think that we’re going to be really happy.”

“I think so, too.”

Robin sniffs again, and Lou thumbs away his own tears, and they sit in the quiet of the yard for a while, background sounds washing over them, laughter and engines and whole lives being lived on the other side of the brown wooden fencing of Lou’s garden.

“You never told anyone?” Robin asks next, “my dad? Grandma and Grandpa?”

Lou shakes his head no, “I don’t know about Richard, but my parents had - have still, I guess - certain expectations of their children. I don’t think they’d take too kindly to knowing the truth about me.”

“Doesn’t it get, like, exhausting? Having to lie all the time? A few years of it has been hard enough.”

“Oh, yeah,” Lou laughs emptily, “but this way I get to keep them. And I - God, I go back and forth all the time on whether I even want that? A lot of the time I think that I shouldn’t want people in my life who don’t love me - all of me. But how do you just retcon so many years of happy memories? How do you let go of that?”

Robin smiles sadly, picks at the skin around her thumbnail, “I’ve been thinking that I - uh… I feel like I need to tell them. Mom and Dad. I think it’ll take them some time, but I - maybe I can have both. Maybe it’s possible to have both. I don’t - I just think I have to try.” She looks up at him like he has all of the answers. He wishes beyond anything that he did.

“I think that that’s incredibly brave,” is all he can whisper, because it is, because he’s amazed at her, at the queer youth of today, who are probably going to change the freaking world.

“I just don’t - I don’t want to have to keep Nancy a secret for the rest of my life. I don’t know how anyone can see that as a bad thing, the way she makes me so happy? I don’t - I know it’s different for you, I’m not - not saying that it isn’t, I just think - I think I have to-”

“Hey,” Lou snatches her hands from middair, halts the panicked waving, “I’m so fucking proud of you, kid. If you feel that you have to tell your parents, then that’s what you have to do. And no matter the outcome, you will always, always be welcomed in my home.”

Robin meets his eyes, finds him deadly serious, nods her thanks through blurry vision. Nancy chooses this moment to return, screen door clanging shut behind her, hair damp around her shoulders. Her face hardens when she finds Robin in tears.

“What’s going on?” She asks, stalks over, can’t stop herself from pulling Robin to her, holds her face against her chest, fiercely protective.

“Lou knows,” Robin sniffs, “but he - we were right, Nance. Sorry, Uncle Lou, we were absolutely speculating about the nature of the relationship with Tad,” she laughs, watery.

“You’re like us?” Nancy breathes, like she hardly dares to believe it.

“More than you know,” he assures her. 

Nancy offers Lou a shaky smile, and he returns it, and they sit in the sunshine with the whole world at their feet. 

*

It’s July, a year later, and Lou Buckley’s Philly home doesn’t feel so lonely anymore. It’s full of Tad’s extensive comic book collection, for one, the man having come to stay over sometime in early February and never having left again. Spare room number one isn’t so spare anymore either, at least for the summer, with Robin and Nancy having taken up residence for the duration of Robin’s summer internship at the Rosenbach whilst Nancy is between jobs. There’s talk of them moving here next year, after Robin’s done with school, and Lou can’t think of anything he’d like better. Spare room number two sits empty for most of the year, but with a revolving door of residents - Jonathan had stayed for a week at the end of June, Tad’s cousin from Atlanta had stayed over the Spring, and Steve’ll be here in a few short days. Lou has, of course, had to find time to fix up the other two bathrooms, amongst other things, and the house is in a state he’s pretty proud of these days. 

His favorite spot of all might be the kitchen, though, where the morning light spills in and paints the whole room golden, where the shiny new coffee machine Tad had bought him for his birthday sits on the counter, where whomever is staying there will meet over dinner after a long day. Where a whole slew of photos Jonathan’s taken over the years are stuck to the refrigerator with a collection of fun magnets Lou and Tad have collected on their travels. They’re Lou’s favorites, of course - there’s the picture of the group at Jonathan’s screening last year; a picture of Tad and Lou about to head out on a date night last winter; and a gorgeous shot of the four kids with Lou last year, on the day after Robin and Lou spilled everything. It had lined up perfectly with one of Lou’s favorite weekends - Philly’s pride event, growing in numbers every year. Feeling like something safer than it did a decade ago. Feeling more and more like a celebration, instead of a fight. All four kids had been excited to attend, and Tad had painted hearts on their cheeks, and he and Lou, and Nancy and Robin had held hands openly in the street, and it had felt like something definitive. Like times were changing. 

But maybe the photo Lou likes best is the one at the very top of the refrigerator. The kids had spent New Years here, welcomed in 1991 at some club downtown, and on New Years Day, all headed out for breakfast to soak up the revelries from the night before, Jonathan had stopped them on Lou’s stoop, claimed the lighting looked ‘too perfect to waste’. There had been a whole collection of photos, but the one claiming the top spot, under an orange juice magnet from a visit to the retirement home in Florida, is a photo of Lou and Robin, standing on the top step in the snow, so far removed from that first stoop, and yet in exactly the same place. The world spins under their feet, and it’s changing every day. He lives in a world, now, in which Richard and Melissa have come to accept that their daughter is different. So maybe he’ll never get to have that with his own parents. Maybe he’ll never get to have the life he thought he might when he was a kid himself, maybe it’s a little too late for him in some respects, but change is coming. The air is thick with it. The future is going to be bright.