Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Robin wouldn't be surprised if she goes into debt from dental bills soon. There's only so many lovesick looks a single person could take before it actually begins to have adverse effects on the health of their teeth.

Because, see, Robin's been paying close attention to Will—it comes with the territory of being a self-appointed mentor: you spend time with your mentee, give advice to them, and observe their life the best you can without crossing into straight-up stalking. However, this particular development has also subsequently resulted in her keeping a close eye on one Michael Wheeler.

They're just so close, like, all the time. She'd thought it was bad before, but that closeness had only been dialed up to the maximum after they'd finally defeated the supernatural forces of evil a month or so ago. It had been a stubborn, long battle, Vecna jumping between everyone's minds in some kind of long-term trance, while El, Kali and Will tried to ambush and kill him. It'd felt a lot like she was some kind of flip-book, switching between memories, nightmares and a red hellscape where they were having a fight of epic proportions.

It had been very hard, and very tiring, and Robin had needed three different painkillers and a 13-hour long nap before she'd somewhat begun feeling like a human again.

But she's getting off track here.

The point is that Robin has had a good, thorough look at Will, Mike and their relationship as a whole. And what she's seen is, frankly, sickening, though mostly in the aforementioned "If I see them gaze yearningly at each other one more time, my dentist will become very rich from all the cavities he'll have to fix," way. Because that is exactly what they're doing. Yearning. Mutually. Those boys are driving her insane acting like that and then proceeding to do nothing about it.

A part of that may be her fault, though, that much she will admit—she'd seen the hope shining in Will's eyes, and her immediate thought had been to gently ease him into accepting that some things weren't meant to be. But that had been before she'd really gotten to understand all the factors at play here, and now? Now, she knew that that hope had been completely warranted.

She just has to convince Will of that. Again.

—

Robin doesn't remember much about science from school, but she does still know how to conduct a proper experiment. And, sure, this may not exactly be science, but something about the structure of the scientific method has always been comforting to her—something about it has always lent her an easy, clear way of organizing her thoughts and figuring things out. And so, she does what she does best: she used it for the gay-ter good.

At the thought, Robin pauses in her chair for a beat, before cringing. She's self-aware enough to recognize that her puns still need some workshopping.

But the good thing about making puns in your head is that there's no one else around to hear them, and thus, no one to relentlessly mock you over them. And so, she elects to forget it and refocuses on the task at hand—step one of an experiment: deciding the aim.

Testing whether Mike likes Will? Robin considers the wording, rolling it around in her mouth before deciding against it with absolute certainty. Proving that Mike and Will want to kiss each other? Preferably for the rest of their lives? Another pause, and then, Is that a creepy thing to think?

Robin shakes herself out of her head. Her thoughts always zip by too quick, going missing for hours only to hijack an unrelated train of thought the next day; she's also self-aware enough to decide, without the shadow of a doubt, that writing things down is probably the better way to go about this. She looks around.

Recording equipment, mic, headphones, buttons, dials, random blinking lights, stray pens, teetering pile of journals… And, there! Triumphantly, she rolls over and grabs her notepad, along with one of the many pens littering her workspace.

1. Aim: To prove that Mike Wheeler and Will Byers have reciprocated, romantic feelings for each other.

Right. Robin wrinkles her nose at the overtly stilted wording but shrugs it off in the end; when you're neck-deep in meddling with your self-proclaimed mentee's love life, you learn to wave away the irrelevances. It's whatever.

Step one, done. Step two is framing a hypothesis. She taps her pencil against her lip—wincing when she accidentally lets the eraser slip into her mouth, yuck—and thinks. Thinks some more. Glares at the ruled paper and thinks even more.

2. Hypothesis:

The perfect sentence is yet to hit her, though, and soon, Robin begins to grow impatient, the blank lines of her notepad beginning to look just a little too smug and taunting. So, as simple as that, she decides to move on. It wasn't like she was getting graded on this or something. And surely, the hypothesis wasn't that important in an experiment.

(The vaguely Dustin-sounding part of her brain is severely miffed at the notion, but she primly told it to stuff it. Snooty science nerds don't get a say in her experiment.)

Okay, step two… ignored. Step three is performing the actual experiment, ergo, the procedure.

Well, she already knows the answer to that. The 'experiment' is just letting Mike and Will interact as normal, with the exception of Robin watching them with as much subtlety as she could muster up.

How do I even write that down?

Robin wisely makes the decision to leave that too. It existing in her brain will have to be enough.

Then, step four: jotting down observations. She writes it down, leaving the rest of the page blank for her to fill as she collects information.

3. Observations:

And so, it begins.

"Hey, Robin."

Hearing her name, Robin startles, looking up from her recording station to see Will in the doorway, smiling. Instinctively, she returns the smile, before the rest of her brain comes back online. She tracks the slight flush to his cheeks, his eyes sparkling, and instantly knows that something's gone down with Mike. Something good.

(Five months since Will had been comfortable enough to come to her about his love life troubles—which, of course, mainly only revolved around Mike. Five months of these exact microexpressions. Five months of his utterly besottedness, and Robin has begun to recognize that particular look as his Lovestruck Face, usually followed by a recount of whatever new, not-strictly-platonic bullshit Mike has done recently.)

Oh, I am so ready for this.

She smiles wider, gestures to the vacant chair beside her, and turns back to where she's planning out the soundtrack for tomorrow's broadcast, a habit Steve had forced her to adopt after she'd sent him scrambling to find the correct track one too many times. Head bowed, face strategically curtained by her hair, she dials up the teasing tone in her voice to make up for the lack of eyebrow-waggling she usually does. "Hey, Byers. What did Mike do now?"

"That's not— How did— What—" comes the sputtering, flustered response.

Robin glances up then, through a part in her hair, smirk firmly plastered on her face. "Don't worry about it," she says pleasantly.

Will spares her a last suspicious look, before seemingly giving up. "I can't even say anything because you are right!" He throws his hands up, in a fashion that screams Mike, holding them up for a second, before bending over to the side to dig around in the backpack he'd brought along with him today, speaking all the while. "So, we were at school, right? It was just after lunch, so we were all, you know, winding up and getting to our next classes. And me and Mike were talking about our next campaign, because he'd asked me if I could draw up some character designs and stuff—he says it helps him to have, like, pictorial representations." At that, he takes out something Robin's gotten to know as his D&D sketchbook. He sets it down on the space in front of him, beside Robin's own planning journal, along with a few of his other art materials, and begins drawing with little fanfare, working his magic. Robin, too, turns back to her own work, while Will's voice carries on, unwavering. "So we were walking and discussing stuff and then, before I knew it, we were at my class. Biology with Ms. Sandra."

Those last words were said with extreme weight, as if they were more important than the others. Robin hums. "Which is important because…?"

"Because! Only I have Biology with Ms. Sandra for fourth period, Robin. No one else does."

A slow, giddy kind of understanding begins dawning on Robin. "Not even Mike?"

"Not even Mike," Will confirms fervently. "So, obviously, I turn around and ask him, 'Wait, why are you here?' And you know what he said, Robin? You know what he said?"

"I do not but I think you're going to tell me."

"He said he wanted to walk me to my class. Robin! He has English Lit with Lucas fourth period. His class is on the other side of the school!"

Huh. How… curious.

Discretely, Robin reaches for the paper she's begun keeping with her at all times, nodding along to Will's rant.

"He didn't even try to hide it," he continues, the scritch-scratch of pencil on paper growing just the slightest bit harsher. "He just smiled at me, all, like, unashamed and shy, and he didn't even stop until the bell rung!"

She can't help but snort (quietly) at that. "At which point he ran like the goddamn Mindflayer was after him?"

Will dramatically collapses back onto his chair, which creaks dangerously under the severe angle it's being pushed to, hands covering his face. "Yeah," comes the muffled response.

Robin snorts again at the sight, louder this time and a lot more sympathetically. She kicks off against the ground, rolling over to her mentee/friend/guy-whose-love-life-she's-unhealthily-invested-in. Pats his shoulder only a little condescendingly. "There, there."

"He's so confusing, Robin."

"Uh huh."

"He's also such a loser, Robin."

That was probably the most accurate description of Mike Wheeler she has ever heard. "I'm sure."

"If he keeps doing things like this, I'll have to revive Vecna and tell him to actually kill me this time."

"That does seem like the correct progression of events."

"I'm so in love with him, Robin. Too much." Will's voice softens when he says this, reverent. Love's been a softer thing for him nowadays, and Robin tucks these moments she gets to see it away in a corner of her heart. Right next to the part that—though she dreads thinking about it—throbs for Nancy, because Robin is figuring a little about love, too.

"I know you are," she replies, her words gentler to match his own. Now I just have to get you to get him to realize that he also is.

Things continue like that, complaints ranging from "One day, I actually will kiss that stupid, smug smile off his face, that'll show him," to "Sometimes he's close enough that I can count his eyelashes, Robin, do you know how close that is!" Eventually, as the blues of the sky start bleeding into the oranges and pinks of sunset, Will's words wind down. He sighs, running his hands over his face. "I can't believe I have to go back to school tomorrow."

Robin stands, stretches. "Well, that must suck for you. Graduating was the best thing I've ever done."

"Better than saving the world, like, four times?"

"Three, actually, you're giving me too much credit. And, hey, saving the world was nothing compared to sitting on my ass and listening to teachers who've never heard of voice modulation all day."

Will opens his mouth, visibly hesitating, before acquiescing to her point, prompting a cheer from Robin, complete with a triumphant finger-waggle. He rolls his eyes at her, before starting to gather his belongings. "Whatever you say. School still isn't that bad."

"For you, maybe," Robin shoots back. Then, nudging his shoulder, "You've got someone to sweeten the deal, after all. Don't you, Byers?"

As expected, Will's face goes firetruck-red almost instantly. He knocks his shoulder against hers back. "Shut up."

They go back and forth like that for a little longer until Will packs up and leaves for home with a promise to visit again soon, but not tomorrow, I'm going over to Mike's tomorrow— don't make that face, it's not like that!

Ha. Sure.

Now, Robin sits at her desk, Will's words echoing in her mind as she writes down the first point of what she's sure are going to end up being many more.

3. Observations:

A. They're always together, either voluntarily or involuntary involuntarily.

• They always team up with each other.

• They always find exscu excuses to be with each other.

• They have a ten minute goodbye ritual.

They're kind of like rubber-bands, she muses. You stretch and you stretch and you stretch but they always snap back together.

Really, this is old news for Robin. After the Byers moved back from sunny California—and, coincidentally, ever since the 'apocalypse' officially began—she's always been unconsciously noting the limited physical space between Mike and Will. Sure, there was that initial cold period when the two were dancing around each other, all awkward avoidance of eye contact, but she's more used to seeing them practically breathing down each others' necks than not nowadays.

Still, something is better than nothing and whatnot. This is a beginning, and a promising one at that.

Oh, this would do. This would do just fine.

It's raining. It is fucking raining, and the back of Robin's shirt is uncomfortably damp, and she dropped a quarter down the drain, and there is hair in her mouth coming from somewhere and—

And yet. And yet her biggest problem at the moment is two teenagers she somehow ended up babysitting.

Not just any teenagers, either, oh no. To top it all off, she's babysitting the most hellish pair of kids ever: Will and Mike. Will and Mike. As in both of them at once.

Because on their own, yes, they're fine. Or, at least, as fine as two kids can be; Robin immensely enjoys her afternoons with Will, and Mike could always be counted on to have snippy banter with. But together? In a group of only three? They mesh into an impenetrable titanium wall of inside jokes and indistinguishable murmuring, and Robin does not care for being stuck banging on said wall for lack of literally anyone else to interact with.

But, as the heavens, or the gods, or even just capital-G God, would have it, that is exactly the position she finds herself in.

She and Will had been heading to Steve's for their monthly movie night, having been at the WSQK together, when they'd run into Mike, who was apparently on the way to the WSQK (to pick up Will. Because he wanted to go together. Even though Robin had been right there.) Not three minutes into their trek, the sky had opened up.

Bored, Robin chances a glance at the pair again, only to see them in the same position they'd been in ten minutes ago: tangled up in what could only be called vertical cuddling under Mike's umbrella. It's a ladybug-themed one, with black polka-dots littered all over it—she isn't actually sure why Mike has an obviously-pilfered-from-the-kids'-section-at-Melvald's umbrella, but who is she to question his attempt at saying no to toxic masculinity?

Sherlock Holmes, apparently, because, on closer examination, hadn't she seen Holly with that exact umbrella last week? And, look, maybe Mrs. Wheeler got them for all of her kids—three-for-one was a seriously good deal, even for an upper-middle class family—and then none of them ever bothered to buy a new one afterwards. And, maybe— oh, nevermind, the umbrella has a messily-drawn H under its awning. Mike's holding Holly's umbrella. How curious.

Robin squints at Mike (and, by extension, Will), trying to figure out what scheme he has cooked up. Technically, this could have been a simple mistake: Mike grabbing the wrong umbrella on his way out, probably in a rush because he was literally never on time. Maybe his umbrella broke, and he's borrowing from Holly? Robin disregards that theory quickly, because Nancy is back for summer break; logically, Mike would've taken her umbrella instead.

But as Robin was coming to realize, Mike: a) was rarely ever logical, and b) had chronic Will-disease.

The more she thought about it, the probability that he had purposefully taken Holly's umbrella because of its smaller size was climbing higher and higher. And the thing is, whatever his ulterior motive is, his scheme is working.

Will and Mike are walking so close to each other that they're probably inhaling each other's exhales (which, Robin thought, is disgusting, no matter how you thought about it). Their heads are angled towards each other—she's kind of impressed that they haven't fallen yet—whispering fervently about something or another. Every couple of minutes, the umbrella wobbles dangerously in Mike's hand, and, oh, would you look at that? Will now has his hand wrapped around the handle—and also Mike's hand—presumably to fortify Mike's grip on it, and now both of them are blushing.

Michael, you absolute dog, Robin thinks somewhat hysterically, oscillating between throwing herself into the quarry and yelling at them to kiss already!

To preserve whatever is left of her sanity, Robin staunchly and decidedly turns her head to the front and vows to not look at them, preferably ever. This decision has the added benefit of realizing that she can see Steve's house looming over them in the near distance, and, oh, she wants to hug it and never let go.

Breaking the vow she made two seconds ago, Robin turns towards Mike and Will and yells, "Hey, lovebirds! We're here!" Her voice is drowned out considerably by the downpour, but it's enough to startle the two. They spring apart guiltily—had they seriously forgotten Robin had been walking beside them for the last twenty minutes?—and, almost immediately, get half-drenched in the rain. Mike glares at his shoulder as if it getting wet was a personal affront to everything he stands for, while Will just stares mournfully at the water drops dotting his t-shirt.

It's enough to satisfy the vindictive part of her for now, and she picks up the pace towards the house.

—

Later, when the second movie's halfway through, and everyone is either asleep, or in the kitchen scavenging for more snacks, Robin pulls out her pocket notepad from—you guessed it—her pocket, along with a pencil.

It's fairly difficult to write with it, considering it's roughly the size of her pinky finger—has to be, in order to fit into her pocket—but Robin makes do. Quickly, and without much regard for handwriting, she jots down the unmistakable culmination of all the evidence she's amassed in the past few hours.

3. Observations:

B. They genuinely literally cannot keep their hands off of each other.

• Mike once helped Will take off a jacket.

• They have a ten minute goodbye ritual.

• They share a throw blanket during Movie Night.

Robin underlines the words "throw blanket" thrice, then circles them for good measure. Those things were small, and it was probably her coldest piece of evidence yet.

She flicks her notepad back closed, just as the rest of the Extended Party™ (having been graciously christened by Dustin) bursts back into the living room. Dustin and Max seem to be arguing about the advantages of drinking bleach—which, respectfully, what the fuck—while Lucas watches on forlornly (Robin will later find out he got kicked out of the conversation for suggesting that ingesting bleach wasn't possible nor healthy for the human body). Nancy brings up the tail with Steve. She'd lost her sweater somewhere in the kitchen apparently, now stripped down to only a thin baby-pink top; it's an objectively smart decision—considering that the Harringtons' did not skimp on the heating and body heat's one hell of a force—but Robin still thanks every god she can remember the name of when Nancy reclaims her place next to her.

The lights go off and the movie clicks back on once everyone gets settled again, and Robin takes the first chance she gets to shift closer to Nancy in the dim light, which has the unfortunate consequence of dislodging her forgotten notepad from Robin's lap straight into hers.

"What's that?" she whispers immediately, gesturing to the item, and, actually, Robin would like to take back every word of gratitude she'd just uttered.

She debates for a second whether to tell the truth—"Oh, nothing, just me investigating your brother and his best friend's possible love life!"—or fumble for a lie. But Nancy isn't the best investigative journalist Robin knows for no reason, so she resigns herself to her fate, sighs, and wordlessly hands over the notepad.

The movie drones on in the background while Nancy flips through her notes, but Robin doesn't quite have the willpower to decipher the words, hyperaware of Nancy's arm brushing her stomach every time she flips a page. She hears an expertly-muffled sound of surprise, and is suddenly, viscerally and uncomfortably reminded of the many caricatures she'd doodled on the margins.

Robin hopes—crosses her fingers in her lap and everything—that she hadn't caught the drawing of Mike as a rainbow; Robin had colored that one.

Finally, finally, Nancy lightly clears her throat, preventing Robin from actually dying out of mortification. "You're conducting an…" Here, she pauses—probably to figure out the best way to say An unholy abomination of science at best and a gross perversion of privacy at worst. In the end, she finishes delicately with, "Experiment. On Mike and Will?"

"Kind of," Robin says vaguely, hoping that her words was quiet enough to get lost to the ear-piercing laser guns—seriously, who allowed that sound effect?—in the movie.

No such luck, unfortunately.

Nancy shifts beside her, and her curls bounce off of Robin's cheek as she turns to face her. The TV casts a blue glow on the side of her face, drawing it simultaneously in bright highlight and long shadows, bouncing off her lashes when she blinks. She arches an eyebrow, and Robin has to dig her nails into her palms to stop herself from leaning forward to kiss the elegant curve.

"Can I help?"

It's only three words, but they're enough to drag Robin out of her daze. She blinks, plays the question back to make sure she had, in fact, heard Nancy asking to join her insane ploy, and when that's confirmed, tries to figure out the genuineness of the question. She scans Nancy's face as best as she can in the low lighting, from her high cheekbones, to her lips gently curved up in a small smile, to the nearly-undetectable, nearly-white scar on her nose, to the scheming tint in her shining eyes; she'd seen that look enough to recognize it instantly.

Still, the first thing out of Robin's mouth is a quiet and bewildered, "What?"

"I want to help," Nancy repeats, the inflection in her words affecting an undeniable slyness.

"Me?"

She nods. "You."

"With this?" Robin clarifies further, pointing at her notepad still in Nancy's grip. The latter nods again, and Robin, baffled, can't help but ask, "Why?"

Nancy hands her the notepad back, and shrugs. Her eyes drift over to the other side of the room; Robin follows her gaze to the lump that is Will and Mike, snug inside their designated blanket, their bodies indistinguishable from each other in a way that has nothing to do with the near-dark. "I've known them almost all their lives." She turns back to look at Robin, a smile pushing at her lips. "It's about time they got their shit together."

Robin grins back delightedly at the words. They linger like that for two, three, four moments, heads angled together like they were seven-years-old and swapping secrets in the dark, close enough to taste. And then Nancy turns back to the movie with one last glance, and that's that. Robin follows her lead, giddy.

She's just gained an accomplice, it seems.