Chapter Text
If Robin was honest with herself, which she was trying really goddamn hard to be, she'd fallen in love with Nancy Wheeler the moment she first laid eyes on her. Obviously considering she would've been about seven years old at the time it was more like adoration, maybe even envy.
Robin hadn't known she was gay until she was thirteen at which point the idea that she just really admired other girls wore thin and she was able to see through the threadbare checkered fabric of heteronormativity to the very homosexual reality on the other side.
It was funny because initially she had really admired Nancy. Like the way her hair curled at the base of her neck when she wore it up in a ponytail or her soft looking pink sweaters and straight A grades.
Nancy always had friends, but until Steve in high school never a boyfriend, she had big serious eyes and teachers treated her like an adult. You could see that everyone respected Nancy Wheeler, she had a good family, came from the right part of town, and she was smart, really smart.
Robin knew that she herself was intelligent but her brain was not wired for academic success, her English teacher sang her praises but even he couldn't help her when she didn't turn assignments in on time or sometimes at all. And her writing (if even legible) was informed but lacked clarity. She had a tendency to ramble, to take tangents and lose track of the topic at hand.
She knew that her differences made it awkward for her parents, felt guilty when they comforted her. Her mom begged her to stop comparing herself with other kids because it would make her miserable, but there were still two weeks which Robin would never be able to scrub from her memory no matter how hard she tried. Two whole weeks in which she'd payed obsessive attention to Nancy's habits in order to learn how to be a real teenage girl. She was twelve, Nancy was thirteen and Robin had just been moved ahead a year in school in an attempt by her parents and teachers to stimulate her brain. She was completely friendless and spent every break and lunch in the library.
She was assigned the seat behind Nancy in English and watched very carefully one morning as Nancy parted her hair down the middle and plaited it into two neat braids. That night Robin sat in front of her mirror tongue poked out in concentration as she tangled her hair into two straggly plaits and brushed it out again. It took her an hour but she finally had it. The next morning she borrowed her mom's blue sweater and caught the bus to school instead of cycling so that she wouldn't arrive with mud on her jeans.
She took mental notes on Nancy's every movement trying to understand how it was that the world parted so easily for Nancy Wheeler when Robin struggled to make even one friend.
Nancy had beautiful handwriting, Robin's was frequently described as 'chicken scratch'. She carefully copied out each letter of the alphabet in Nancy's neat loops and lines and wrote her essay (on the inherent sexism in the narrative of King Lear) slowly and deliberately. She had a different less brilliant English teacher that semester who did not appreciate her late essay, her newly improved handwriting or her attempt to put a feminist spin on the assigned topic of Goneril and Regan's comeuppance.
Nancy would put her hand up to answer the teacher in every class but when Robin attempted to do the same her tongue twisted and her throat dried up so that she was barely able to make herself heard. It was humiliating and seemed to her, to be a symbol of everything that stood between her and her chosen icon of teenage girlhood.
Robin ended the experiment when she arrived home Thursday night and poked herself violently in the eye attempting to put on mascara. With black tears streaming down her face she scrubbed off the lipgloss (that made her feel nauseous anyway) and slumped onto her unmade bed.
It was almost a relief to wake up Friday morning and know that she could wear whatever the hell she wanted, that she could stay in bed the extra ten minutes if she cycled hard enough. Then on Monday she found out she made the audition for band and moved on with her life. Made friends with some fellow geeks and never looked back.
In the second semester of their sophomore year Nancy missed over a week of school. Robin tried not to notice since they weren't sharing any classes that semester and because she now had a crush on Tammy Thompson who'd let her borrow a pen the day before. Robin eventually cut the endless loop of thoughts surrounding Nancy's absence by thinking hard about Barbara Holland's disappearance. Her and Nancy had been best friends it made sense.
The rumours of Jonathan Byers being arrested for punching a cop had flown around the school and Robin had seen Steve Harrington scrubbing away at his graffiti with her own eyes. The whole thing was confusing it went against everything Robin took for fact about high school cliques but it sure was interesting. Nothing this exciting had happened in Hawkins since Eleanor Gray and Dirk Miller had eloped the week before graduation two years ago. And now Eleanor worked the checkout at Melvald's and was married to Richard Ingalls. So she could see it would all blow over soon.
When Nancy returned to school a week later Robin noticed something was different. She was behind her in the lunch queue one day when Nancy flinched as a freshman slammed his lunch tray down. And there's a new look in her eyes a wariness that wasn't there three weeks ago. When Robin was sent to borrow a chair from one of Nancy's classes she noticed that Nancy's eyes were unfocused even as she stared straight ahead at the blackboard and she hadn't looked up when Robin entered unlike the rest of the class.
Most of Robin's friends were in the grades above and below and also in band so she barely knew Nancy. And besides she was going through her own shit so she did eventually come up with something new to fixate on. At last for a while.
One blustery evening after school instead of going home she cycled over to the library. Robin headed straight for the stacks where she found Jonathan Byers and Nancy goddamn Wheeler sat hunched over a table in the back corner where Robin liked to sit because she could prop her damp sneakers on the radiator to dry them before she headed home. Nancy and Jonathan were having what sounded like a whispered argument over a stack of books. Robin moved subtly closer to peek at the titles. She was surprised by what she saw; Vampires, Werewolves, Bigfoot, Nessie and even some extra terrestrial stuff. The obtrusive titles were all there in a pile between the two.
Robin hadn't meant to eavesdrop, honestly she was just waiting for her table to free up but then she caught an earful of their discussion.
"What if it comes back?" Was Nancy's whispered question. An intriguing slightly terrifying question, but she didn't look scared only determined. Her jaw was set and her gaze steely. Robin tried very hard not to imagine that gaze focusing on her.
Robin went to a shelf and pulled out a tall glossy book. She wasn't sure what she was doing but she was curious as to what had led the one day valedictorian and sorority girl Nancy Wheeler to be sat in a shadowy corner with the school photographer notorious for his assault of Officer Callahan and also taking pervy photos of girls at parties. Maybe trombone Kurt was right and that's why Steve had been looking rather dejected lately.
"Have you tried this one?" She asked balancing it on top of their pile and clearing her throat to dislodge the rasp that stuck there.
"Sorry?" Nancy looked up, her blue eyes impossibly wide like a deer in headlights.
"For your assignment!" Robin quickly reassured them "I mean I assume that's what this is. Like for j- journalism? you took that elective right? Not that I'm a stalker I just assumed because it's not for English and - and you wanted to be a journalist!"
" Journalism!" Johnathon interrupted breathlessly. "That's what these are for."
"We're supposed to pick a mythical creature and explore the facts that could be behind it." Nancy added smoothly "These are our secondary sources"
"Well this was my primary source when I was eleven and really wanted to find proof of werewolves, it's detailed and has -" Robin held up a hand to make air quotes, ensuring that she would not look completely insane ""eyewitness accounts""
"Thanks, it sounds perfect." Nancy smiled sounding only a little relieved. And Robin felt her heart turn to warm sludge in her chest. Their eye contact was painfully direct and she forced herself to blink.
"No problem." Robin nodded, turned and walked quickly away. Not too quickly but just fast enough that the ball of energy building in her chest wouldn't escape before she was well out of earshot.
She knew it was weird to feel like you just aced a conversation, scored an A+ in social interaction but even so as she stood behind the library in the cold grey drizzle she was unable to stop herself from beaming.
She's so pathetically happy that she completely forgets the book that she came for and the curiosity that drew her to Nancy and Jonathan in the first place.