Chapter Text
The circles under Nancy’s eyes have been getting darker for weeks. Robin’s been tracking it for nearly a month. No matter how much makeup she piles on. No matter how carefully she styles her hair to cast extra shadows on her face, it doesn’t quite hide it.
She’s also been downing coffee like it’s water. No matter the time or day, she’s always drinking coffee. Robin’s not actually sure she’s seen her without a coffee nearby in the last week straight.
Finally, the most damning thing Robin has noticed has been the twitching. Robin is the twitchy one. Robin is the one that has too many thoughts and too much energy to sit still for more than thirty seconds. But lately, Nancy’s fidgeting fingers and tapping toes could give Robin a run for her money. When she pairs that with the fact that Nancy has also been flinching at any loud noise and unexpected fast movement in her periphery…well, Robin feels pretty comfortable saying she knows Nancy is struggling.
Not that she has said it, of course. Not that she will say it to any of their friends. She knows Nancy would hate that. She knows she would probably wake up strangled to death by another frilly pink shirt if she ever tried.
But, she knows.
What she doesn't know is why no one else seems to be noticing. Not even either of her ex-boyfriends, who claimed to have loved her at one point even if they don’t currently love her, seem to be noticing how much Nancy is sliding. Not even her own brother.
But Robin watches.
And Robin notices.
And Robin knows she absolutely cannot let Nancy continue to struggle alone. She may not know exactly what it is Nancy’s struggling with, but she has a lot to guess from, and no one deserves to deal with any of it alone. The rest of them have at least one person to go to about it. Robin and Dustin have Steve. Max and El have Lucas and Mike. Even Jonathan still has Will after his breakup with Nancy. But Nancy’s not leaning on anyone and Robin knows that can’t stand.
It just can’t.
So, she starts small.
One day after one of their group strategy meetings wraps up, she walks up and asks for Nancy to go for a walk with her.
Nancy hesitates, hand twitching at her side and eyes only half-focusing on Robin as she stares at the patrol schedule and maps the group just spent the last hour studying and refining.
Robin steps closer, lowering her voice so that no one else can hear them. “Come on, please? I think it would be really good to get some fresh air.”
Nancy’s eyes finally focus on hers and search for a few more seconds before sending one last almost-longing look at the maps and finally nodding. “I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to take a short break.”
Robin smiles and nods, bouncing on her heels. “Great! After you!” She gestures toward the door with her hands and raises her eyebrows expectantly at Nancy.
Nancy hesitates a second longer, giving Robin an odd look, before finally putting down her coffee cup (an unexpected score on Robin’s part) and walking outside. Robin trails after her a couple of feet behind, doing everything she can to keep the bouncing excitement of her victory from becoming too noticeable.
When they get outside, Nancy heads straight for the road, walking along the side that butts up against a thick patch of trees.
Robin falls into step next to her and sucks in a deep breath, relishing in the crisp air. It’s not quite dark yet, sky just starting to darken with little pinpricks of stars making themselves known here and there. The weather has still been warm enough lately that they can both walk around in light jackets until well after dark, so Robin isn’t worried about them getting too cold. Nancy’s even started wearing jeans more often than dresses and skirts these days, which will make it a lot easier to keep her outside as long as she can. Away from it all.
They walk in step for a few minutes without talking.
“What did you want to talk to me about?” Nancy asks eventually. Her voice still has that slightly hard edge to it that Robin’s really starting to hate, as if she’s expecting Robin to propose a new counter plan to one of Nancy’s and is prepared to debate and defend as needed.
Robin glances at her out of the corner of her eye and finds Nancy doing the same, a slightly nervous expression on her face despite the hard front to her words. “Nothing. I just wanted to go for a walk. Felt like we could both use some air. Don’t you think we spend far, far too much time staring at battle plans for people our age?”
“Oh,” Nancy says. Her face pinches a bit. Her voice shifts, softening. “Uh, yeah, we do spend a lot of time in there. It’s important though. We need to be ready. We need to have a plan.”
Robin nods. “True. True. But there are a lot of us and we’re a team and I feel like we could maybe stagger our efforts a bit. Maybe make sure we’re all getting breaks.”
“I suppose…” Nancy says. She takes several more steps before talking again. “Have you been feeling run down?”
Robin shrugs and swings herself around to walk backwards for a few steps so she can face Nancy and look her in the eyes. “Aren’t we all feeling run down? We’ve been at this for months. Years, even.”
Nancy holds her eye contact for only a second before nodding and looking down at her feet again, clearly trying to use her hair to shadow more of her face. “I guess.”
Robin nods and spins herself back around, not trusting her coordination or limbs to manage one more step in that position. The last thing she needs is to fall on her ass and break her skull open in front of Nancy. Somehow that feels counter-productive to her general mission here. “I just think it’d be good to take a few more walks. I want to make a habit of it every time we do one of these meetings, maybe more. Would you be open to being my walking buddy?”
Nancy’s silent for a few long seconds. “Why not ask Steve?” There’s no malice to the question like there might have been a year ago. No, the words actually come out a little hollow and Robin’s heart twinges a bit at being right. Nancy probably has been feeling like the only one without someone to lean on.
“Because I’m asking you,” Robin says.
The words hang in the air for a few minutes as they just walk.
“Yeah, Robin, I’d be happy to be your walking buddy.”
Robin bounces through another couple of steps and swings her arms. “That’s great! So what’s new with you? I feel like we haven’t gotten the chance to talk about non-monster related things in a while.”
Nancy sighs, but when Robin sneaks another peek at her out of the corner of her eye, she has that one particular half-smile on her face that Robin knows means she’s secretly pleased.
It doesn’t take any more prompting to get Nancy talking about more mundane things like school and her current thoughts on college.
Robin can barely keep the grin off of her face. She responds to all of Nancy’s comments with the appropriate amount of enthusiasm and interest. She asks questions and encourages the topic to shift and change. And, when Nancy eventually ends up flipping the questions back on her to ask about band, school, and even work, Robin is thrilled.
They drift closer together as they walk, subconsciously sheltering together as the dark and the chill of the night descends on them, like two kids sharing secrets at a sleepover. It’s just them and the road and the trees.
In the end, Robin herself even starts to forget about the main reasons they’re out there. She might not completely drop her guard, but it does relax.
Nancy does, too. By the time they turn around and head back, Nancy’s hands are swinging more loosely by her hips and her energy as a whole is more languid and less intense.
Robin even gets her to laugh a few times as they come around the last bend before getting back, and it’s better than music. Robin actually feels it loosen the muscles in her chest, making it just a little bit easier to breathe.
She hadn't realized how much she's missed Nancy's laugh.
Nancy’s steps even slow for the last stretch of road.
They’ve been gone at least thirty minutes, a lot longer than Robin expected to be able to keep her away. It’s as validating as it is concerning for Robin.
It should not be a monumental feat for Robin to have distracted Nancy for just thirty minutes.
In a lot of ways, she wishes she'd done something sooner.
Especially when she watches Nancy’s shielding reassemble the closer they get back to the house. Her posture straightens, turning harder and stiffer. Her face morphs, refocusing into the mask Robin’s gotten so used to. The twitching picks back up in her hands.
But, it’s not nearly as bad. It is all still at least a little bit looser. So, Robin decides that for a first attempt, it’s not so bad. She’ll keep trying.
Nancy does give her a small smile when they get back to the door, thanking her for the walk before she slips back inside, and that fills Robin with enough hope to power through.
She takes a deep breath for herself before falling back into the fray with her.
It becomes a pattern.
From then on, every time they do one of the group meetings, Robin and Nancy take a walk afterwards.
Sometimes they talk.
Sometimes they don’t.
Sometimes they’re longer or shorter.
But they always walk.
Robin keeps it up for just over a week before nudging things forward just a little bit more.