Chapter Text
Robin has been working up the courage to ask Vickie on a date for months, which turns out to be significantly harder than surviving monsters from alternate dimensions. Somehow, it feels worse.
Steve is the one who finally nudges her over the edge. Not with a big elaborate speech, just a look and a pointed, you’re running out of excuses kind of silence that makes Robin realize she’s either going to do this now or keep circling it forever.
So she decides: this week. Which means she spends the next three days rehearsing.
The sentence loops in her head constantly, often popping up at the worst times: while brushing her teeth, while organizing vinyls at work, while staring at the ceiling instead of sleeping.
Do you want to go on a date with me?
You and I should go out together?
I was wondering if maybe—
None of them feel right. Each version is either too much or somehow not enough, and Robin can’t quite explain why. The more she practices, the more it feels like she’s standing with one foot over a line she’s drawn herself, knowing that once she steps across it, everything changes — and there’s no pretending she didn’t mean it
With Steve’s help, by which she means Steve listening patiently and then cutting in with a blunt, Just ask her, Buckley, she settles on something simple. Safe and direct: Would you maybe want to go out on a date?
It still isn’t perfect, but it’s close enough.
But then she actually sees Vickie.
She’s just stepping out of the hospital, cardigan slung over one arm, hair a little flattened from her volunteer cap, looking effortlessly soft in that way that makes Robin suddenly aware of her own rapid heartbeat.
And just like that, Robin’s brain empties completely. Vickie is halfway down the hospital steps when she sees her.
She stops short, surprise flickering across her face before it softens into something unmistakably pleased. Robin catches it immediately, just as she always does with Vickie. That little shift, like the day just tilted a degree in a better direction.
“Oh,” Vickie says, smiling as she comes closer. “Hi.”
“Hey,” Robin replies, a beat too quick.
Vickie glances around, then back at her. “I didn’t know you were coming by.”
Robin hadn’t actually planned for this part. She rocks back on her heels, hands tucked deep into her jacket pockets like they might keep her steady.
“Yeah,” she says, a little breathless. “I, uh— I wanted to see you.”
Vickie’s mouth curves into a grin at that, warm and unguarded, and somehow that makes Robin even more nervous than before.
They drift through the hospital parking lot together, weaving between rows of cars still warm from the day. Gravel crunches under their shoes. Robin keeps her hands in her jacket pockets so she won’t fidget too obviously, though she’s fairly certain she’s failing at that.
They reach the edge of the lot where Vickie’s little yellow punch buggy waits under the streetlight, bright and unmistakable.
Vickie slows, glancing up at the sky. It’s clear tonight, the air pool without being too cold. “Do you want to walk?” she asks, casually. “It’s nice out.”
Robin blinks, a little startled by the suggestion. “Yeah,” she says quickly. “Yeah, sure.”
Vickie studies her for half a second longer than necessary, eyes soft, like she’s noticing something she isn’t naming.
“Okay,” she says, and hooks her keys back into her bag without another thought.
They start down the sidewalk together instead, and the quiet feels different than it usually does. Robin is suddenly, acutely aware of how close they’re standing. Of the fact that she chose this side of the street on purpose. Of how easily their hands could brush if either of them shifted just a little.
They walk for a while, Vickie talking to her about everything and nothing, a patient who tried to sneak in after hours, the vending machine that ate her last dollar, and Robin is nodding at all the right places, offering the right noises, but she’s only catching every third word. Her pulse is loud in her ears. She keeps missing her moment and then realizing she’s missed it.
They don’t notice how far they’ve wandered until the neon sign of Melvald’s flickers into view at the end of the block. Vickie slows, looking over her shoulder toward where the hospital should be.
Robin follows her line of sight and lets out a quiet breath. “I think we went a little too far.”
They turn back the way they came, the rhythm of their steps falling into place again. Neither of them mentions how far they went or how neither of them seemed to notice.
The hospital sign comes back into view slowly, first the faint glow above the trees, then the full shape of the building rising out of the dark. Cars move in and out of the lot. A door shuts somewhere behind them.
Robin feels it then — the narrowing of the night. The way the edges of it are starting to close.
Vickie is saying something about her shift tomorrow, about needing to be in early. Robin nods, but she’s barely listening. Her hands drift to her jacket pockets again, fingers catching on the lining. They’re almost there. Gravel is already visible ahead, pale under the streetlights.
If she doesn’t say it now, she won’t.
The parking lot is ten steps away.
Eight.
Five.
It had sounded manageable in her bedroom.
“Would you want to go on a date with me?”
Out here, with Vickie walking beside her, it feels like stepping into something she can’t quite see the bottom of.
She swallows. Opens her mouth.
Closes it.
Vickie glances over, eyebrows lifting just slightly. “You okay?”
“Yeah,” Robin says. “I mean— yeah. Just thinking.”
They make it a little farther. Robin exhales, stops walking altogether.
“Do you want to—” she starts, then cuts herself off, scrubbing a hand through her hair. “Sorry. Hang on.”
Vickie’s expression shifts, curious but calm, and she adjusts her pace so they’re not walking so much as hovering in place.
Robin gestures vaguely between them, like the idea might be hovering somewhere in the space they’re sharing, her thumb twisting one of her rings without her realizing it. “I was wondering if maybe you wanted to do something later this week.”
Vickie tilts her head. “Something?”
“Yeah,” Robin says. “Like we could— I don’t know. Go somewhere. Just us.”
It’s not what she practiced. Not even remotely. But her thoughts are moving too fast to flag it as a problem, even when there’s a half-second of silence where she could have corrected herself.
Then Vickie’s mouth curves, a quiet smile that lingers a second before she answers.
“I’d like that,” she says.
Robin blinks. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
They linger a second longer than either of them intends to. Vickie shifts her keys in her hand. “Do you want a ride?”
Robin almost says yes. It would be easy. It would mean a few more minutes beside her.
But there’s this fizz under her skin, and she suddenly wants a quiet block to herself to grin like an idiot about the fact that she actually did it. So, she shakes her head gently. “I think I’ll walk.”
Vickie searches her face for a second, like she’s making sure that’s what she wants, then nods. “Okay.”
“Call me when you get home?” Robin adds, before she can stop herself.
Vickie smiles at that. “I will.”
“Okay.”
Another small pause.
“See you,” Robin says, softer now.
“See you,” Vickie echoes, just as soft.
Robin turns toward the sidewalk. She hears the quiet click of the car door behind her, the engine catching a moment later.
She walks away feeling oddly light. She was smiling to herself, replaying the way Vickie said yes, her smile.
She was already planning how she’s going to tell Steve, rehearsing the casual way she’ll pretend she wasn’t spiraling about it for days.
Then, somewhere between one streetlight and the next, the conversation starts replaying, really replaying.
“I was wondering if maybe you wanted to do something later this week.”
Robin slows.
Do something.
She stops walking. Shit.
That’s… not what she practiced.
She stares down at the sidewalk, feeling the shift happen in real time. She hadn’t asked Vickie out, not really. She hadn’t said date. She hadn’t even implied date. She’d suggested… an activity.
Robin presses her lips together, “Oh my god,” she mutters to herself.
There is a very real chance that Vickie thinks this is just another hangout. A slightly more scheduled one. A friendly evening with absolutely no romantic subtext.
Robin drops her forehead briefly into her hand.
She has spent weeks building up the nerve to ask the girl she is hopelessly, ridiculously in love with on a date; rehearsed it, practiced it, imagined what it might feel like, and then she didn’t even say it. She has no idea if Vickie understood what she meant.
There is a very real possibility that Vickie said yes to something much smaller than what Robin was offering. Smaller than what she was hoping for.