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Nancy stormed inside the least functional bathroom of Rosehill, desperate for at least the smallest illusion of privacy, and as soon as the door closed behind her and she made sure she was alone, she completely allowed herself to break down.

“Shit,” she said quietly while washing her trembling right hand with bloodied knuckles, and then spoke up more confidently. “Shit, shit, shit!” She started pacing around the small space, trying and failing to control her breathing. “Stupid Steve,” she seethed through gritted teeth. “Stupid, stupid Steve. Stupid fucking Steve Harrington!” Nancy couldn’t control how loud she was yelling and, frankly, she cared very little about who heard her words. Or so she thought.

As soon as she read someone’s phone ring in one of the stalls, her heart skipped a beat in her chest. Her eyes were bloodshot, her makeup messed up, and even the pastel green tie of her uniform was loose. All of her was an untidy and heartbroken mess. She didn’t want her reputation even more ruined by some idiot telling the entire school that she went crazy talking to herself in the bathroom. Not after already having her life ruined by her boyfriend, ex-boyfriend , painting a gross and, honestly, badly done graffiti in front of the school. “ Nancy the slut Wheeler ” it said with an unsteady hand and an obvious miscalculation of space, having nearly run out of space before finishing her last name. Goddammit, she thought, the thing to end her life wasn’t even something as well done and sophisticated as she believed she deserved. And still, she had punched Steve’s face the second she found him in school, getting in much more trouble than he did, because the world was a totally marvelous place for a girl like her. With this outraged thought in mind, Nancy didn’t hesitate, she forcefully kicked open the door of each and every stall until she reached the last one, and found inside a lanky blonde girl she didn’t recognize sitting on top of the closed toilet and holding her hands up awkwardly.

“What the hell?!” Nancy snapped. “Were you listening?”

“No… not intentionally,” the girl said slowly and then, seemingly spurred on by Nancy’s threatening glare, she went on, “I’m sorry, I was already here, and then you came in, so thought I should hide, but then you didn’t leave so I didn’t know what to do and my phone… Listen, for the record, that was very fucked up what he did to you, and you were right to punch him, and I-”

“Who are you?” Nancy interrupted her, rolling her eyes without an ounce of discretion.

“Me? Oh, uh… I’m Robin! Robin Buckley. I’m new and, actually-”

“Well, Robin, I don’t need your pity.”

With that, Nancy turned around hastily and walked out of the bathroom with her head held high. She’d find somewhere else to fix her makeup, her hair, her life. She didn’t need a stranger’s pity. She needed to figure out how to fix this unfortunate twist of events. She had worked hard enough during her entire life to get to where she was, director of the school paper, guaranteed internship on the best news outlet of the estate, on her way to Yale, and yes, sure, the popularity at school wasn’t exactly bad . It wasn’t like her number one priority in life was her status at school, but so much of her future depended on it, didn’t it? She wasn’t about to let one Steve Herrington ruin that for her just because she briefly dated a different guy in California over the summer after breaking up with him. 

Nancy was so furious, so busy plotting plans of impossible revenge strategies that by the time that goddamned awful first day of school was over, she had completely forgotten about running into the new girl in the bathroom. And then her car proceeded to make the worst day of her year into officially the worst day of her life .

“Shit,” Nancy sighed, and let her head fall into the unresponsive steering wheel of the car that just refused to function.

“Hey!”

Upon hearing that vaguely familiar raspy tone, Nancy looked around until she noticed the new girl, Robin something, staring at her from a beat-up old car a few feet away from hers.

“Do you want a ride,” Robin asked with a smirk that looked a little better on her than the frightened expression Nancy had seen on her before. “Or do you still not want my pity?”

Maybe it was the fact that Nancy still didn’t want to further embarrass herself by asking for a ride from any of the friends that took Steve’s side or letting them see her take public transport which apparently was a crime for their small minds. Maybe it had a little bit to do with Robin daring to tease her even after Nancy had been so purposefully and brutally unfriendly during their first meeting. This could only mean that Robin was A) too stupid to know what she was getting herself into, which would make this ride home entirely harmless, or B) bold enough to qualify as a threat, and Nancy knew that threats must be either eradicated or transformed into allies. This was her opportunity to figure Robin out and act accordingly. Besides, she just really wanted to get home.

What Nancy didn’t expect was for Robin to immediately launch into a painfully long and uninteresting rant about how much she knew about cars and what exactly was probably wrong with Nancy’s. There was a chance that Nancy let her talk that much because Robin happened to have an almost mortifyingly attractive voice, and Nancy was only human, but even she had her limits. 

“Are you going to talk the entire time?” she blurted out, interrupting Robin in the middle of a sentence.

Robin didn’t reply, but at least she stopped talking. The problem was that she turned her head to the side to look at Nancy, and she looked for a second too long, enough to make Nancy uncomfortable.

“Eyes on the road!” Nancy snapped. “Jesus. You’re an awful driver as it is. Are you trying to get us killed? Do you even have a license?”

“Eh,” Robin shrugged noncommittally.

“Fantastic,” Nancy sighed, rolled her eyes, and slumped in her seat. Anything in order to convey her annoyance at the entire situation.

“You’re delightful company, Wheeler,” Robin said, back to that playful smirk, but her face shifted into something sincere and serious as she added, “Still. You didn’t deserve what just happened to you.”

Nancy appreciated the words. Robin was the first one to say it. But she was still feeling defensive, and she genuinely didn’t want anyone’s pity. “How would you know,” Nancy retorted, albeit much more quietly and much less hostile than any other word she had given to the other girl so far.

“Nobody deserves something like that,” Robin said with a shrug, as if it really could be that simple. “I should know,” she added, and Nancy would be lying if she said that didn’t pique her curiosity.

Robin made a pause, long enough for Nancy to interrupt her if she wanted, but, to be honest, she kind of wanted to talk about anything other than herself. So, Robin continued talking.

“So, I’m new to Rosehill, but not to the area, really. Back in middle school, I went to summer camp with a few kids from your school. And there was this girl… this lovely, sweet, wonderful girl that just… She was just so kind, you know? She was nice to me from the very first day and I just… I couldn’t help falling for her. I already kind of knew I liked girls but she just made it so real to me, and I thought, God , I really thought she liked me back. I thought maybe something would happen between us that summer but… There was someone else. A girl overheard us talking and connected the dots and the next thing I knew the entire camp was playing the cruelest and most elaborate pranks on me because this other girl told everyone that I was gay. My crush hid away from me, everyone was disgusted, they had to call my parents to pick me up… I… It was awful. She destroyed me.”

“Damn,” Nancy sighed, truly disturbed by the scenario. “Kids can be so cruel. I should know, I have a younger brother.” Nancy almost shivered, thinking of something like that happening to Mike. She pictured an entire camp turned against Robin like the entire school was turned against her for breaking their ‘King’s’ heart, and his nose. “If Steve’s only repercussion is having to clean his dumb graffiti… what happened to those girls?” Nancy couldn’t help but ask.

“I hear they’re both thriving,” Robin shrugged.

“Okay, you can’t just say that and not give me any names.”

For the first time, Robin seemed to hesitate, but she eventually gave in and said, “Chrissy Cunningham and Vickie Taylor. First crush and the devil incarnate, respectively.”

Nancy chuckled. “Chrissy is head cheerleader now, so you don’t have bad taste, Buckley,” she said and after some thought, she went on, “Vickie… Vickie- Oh! The band nerd lesb- Right. Vickie, yeah, I’ve seen her.” Nancy bit her tongue and tried to play it cool. The look that Robin sent her way let her know she wasn’t remotely as discreet as she thought she was but she could get back up. “So, what are you going to do now? Don’t tell me you’re entering the school of the girl that traumatized you and you’re just going to pretend nothing happened,” Nancy told her. 

“That was kind of the plan,” Robin answered with an awkward wince and proceeded to almost get them killed with her atrocious driving skills again. “I mean, I doubt she even remembers me.”

“That’s lucky,” Nancy said. “I wish the entire school could forget about me for a second. I wish I could slip by unnoticed to kick Steve Harrington’s ass off that ridiculous pedestal he’s on and just… throw him to the wolves, I don’t care. Do you have any idea how easily this little incident could spiral into ruining my reputation outside of school? I could lose my internship, any hopes of a scholarship, and my entire future would be fucked because one stupid boy couldn’t handle the idea that I wasn’t interested in him anymore.”

Robin started to smile, and she stared at Nancy again, which made her nervous for unreasonable motives and for the very reasonable fact that she could crash the damn car. 

“I wish I had that kind of confidence to get back at Vickie. I mean, if I was you and I could get back at her… It’s like we’re on opposite ends of-”

“What if we weren’t though?” Nancy asked.

“You interrupt me a lot.”

“What if we worked together? What if you could be the one to infiltrate Steve’s bubble to execute a perfect revenge?” Nancy asked. This plan was forming itself rapidly and beautifully in her mind as she continued to put it into words out loud. “He freaked out when he heard about me and Jonathan but God knows he’d lower his guard for any girl that so much as walked past him.”

“Uh, Nancy? Did you forget the part about me being a lesbian?”

“ And I could just as easily shatter Vickie’s life.”

“Okay,” Robin sighed defeatedly. “Now I’m interested, but still terrified!”

“Are you in?” Nancy asked her outright. She vaguely listened to all of Robin’s little comments, but she had to be convinced. Nancy realized that, as much as it killed her, she probably couldn’t pull this off alone, and everything about Robin screamed she was the perfect blank slate to create an ally. “Look, Vickie deserves what’s coming to her. That behavior was inexcusable. Don’t you want to make her pay? I’ll help you and you’ll help me. I need to protect my career, which means I have to save my reputation, and to do that I have to destroy Steve’s life. It’s very simple.”

Robin frowned, she pretty much pouted while considering her options or lack thereof. Nancy was expecting a positive answer, but her brain had already formulated five more points to convince the new girl to join her newest passion project. However, that wasn’t necessary.

“You and I have very different definitions for what ‘simple’ means, Wheeler,” Robin sighed.

“Is that a yes?” Nancy grinned, not even attempting to dim the mischievous glint of her smile. It was strange, the way Robin had her smiling like that not long after Nancy had deemed this the worst day of her entire life. It was easy, smiling with Robin beside her. This was something that Nancy profusely pushed to the back of her mind. She was too delighted by Robin’s reluctant thumbs up and too preoccupied with surviving that car ride. This felt like the beginning of something great.

“Stop moving, Robin!” Nancy complained, while trying and failing to apply makeup to her new… sort of, almost, questionable, possible, friend .

“I can’t!” Robin protested, once again dodging Nancy’s makeup brush. “You’re terrifying! And I can do my own make-up, thank you very much.”

“Your usual style won’t work,” Nancy rolled her eyes and huffed, exasperated, as usual, with Robin. “I need you to be mysterious but inconspicuous, naive but interesting, perfectly boring to fit in and pretty enough to be noticed.”

“Am I not pretty enough already?” Robin asked, raising an eyebrow to attempt humor over very real insecurities.

Nancy thought about it for a second, staring at Robin with the intensity of someone solving a complicated puzzle. Robin hated the feeling of Nancy figuring out exactly what she was feeling.

“You’re handsome,” Nancy stated confidently. Then she proceeded to unexpectedly push Robin’s chest. Robin, already weakened and distracted by Nancy’s words, fell back easily, lying on her back on top of Nancy’s bed. “But I need you to not be yourself, I need you to be Steve’s type,” Nancy said, perfectly calm, as if she wasn’t quickly and expertly getting on the bed and straddling Robin’s lap as she talked. “Understood?”

Robin nodded, momentarily speechless. Her situation wasn’t improved by Nancy putting a hand beside her head and leaning in to continue doing Robin’s make-up now that Robin had been rendered immobile by Nancy’s legs around her waist and Nancy’s words getting an iron grip on her heart. This wasn’t fair , Robin thought. This rich girl, mean and dangerous and with a serious homophobic aura about her wasn’t supposed to make her nervous like this. Both could play this game, right?

“Anything you want,” Robin replied in a whisper, well aware that it made her already raspy voice sound deeper. And then she put her hands on Nancy’s waist. Something innocent, just to keep Nancy still and steady above her. If she pulled Nancy even closer to her body, close enough that it should’ve made any strictly heterosexual girl uncomfortable, well, that was a complete accident, of course. The problem was that then Robin was forced to deal with the shocking consequence… Nancy didn’t pull away from her. If Nancy, Robin could’ve sworn Nancy was even more affected than she was about their positions.

Robin hated the party currently going on in Steve’s house. She didn’t know anybody, she hated everyone that dared talk to her, she was uninterested in the pool, the people, and the music. She was only surviving on the free snacks, drinks, and Nancy’s constant texts. Sure, Nancy was mostly annoying and demanding, but it was some sort of company. One of Robin’s biggest complaints, besides the fact that Nancy’s sparkly girly makeup made a handful of boys attempt small talk with her, was the fact that the infamous Steve Harrington wasn’t even at his own party. Or, at least, he was hiding. It wasn’t fair. Robin wanted to hide. Which, on second thought, wasn’t such a bad idea, for personal reasons as well as for Nancy’s vengeful reasons.

So, Robin discreetly sneaked inside Steve’s house. Judging by the way most people were hanging by the pool outside, she guessed that complete strangers weren’t exactly allowed inside the house. Maybe people could be allowed as far as the kitchen, but there was no way she was allowed to go upstairs, as she was very much doing. Robin was careful, as much as she was capable of. She moved up the stairs very quietly, and she was rewarded with the first sounds of angry whispers coming from the second floor. Gotcha, she thought. Just a few steps more and she would complete this task, finish this job for Nancy, and make her happy. Robin shivered at her own thoughts and reached the top of the stairs. She looked around the corner and took a moment to understand what she was seeing.

“But Steve, we ran out of snacks!” A boy was saying from his spot in the doorway of one of the bedrooms.

“Yeah, and I got you more!” Steve hissed as quietly as he could while losing his patience. “I told you to stay inside until these people leave.”

“Yeah, well, kick them out King Steve ,” a redheaded girl said with a sarcastic tone that put a smile on Robin’s face. She leaned out of the bedroom, grabbed the two bowls in Steve’s hands, passed one to a different girl, and added, “We’ll take the snacks though. Bye.”

“You- Ugh. You know I can’t just kick them out. As if they’d listen to me! I’m a house with a pool and a good reputation, not even human,” Steve groaned, sounding a little too genuine for these circumstances, and thoroughly shocked Robin, who didn’t expect any of this from the guy that had hurt Nancy so badly.

“Stop being so dramatic!” a different boy yelled from inside the room. How many children was he hiding there?

Steve shushed him aggressively and the boy still standing in the doorway laughed as quietly as he could. “You know, if you hate the party and those people so much, you could join us for a game,” the boy said, his face genuinely lighting up as he looked up at Steve, who sighed gravely.

“I’d love to, Dustin. But I really should get back to the party, at least for a while,” Steve shrugged, but then he started to smile and patted the boy’s head. “Plus, I’m too cool for your nerdy board games.”

The boy started to give his argument, but Steve was starting to leave, and that was Robin’s queue. She descended the stairs as fast as she could without killing herself and when she landed, she got a full second to regain her breath before she heard Steve saying “Hey! Who are you? What are you doing here?”

Robin winced. Fuck being “Steve’s type”. She didn’t know how to be anything other than herself. That was going to be her downfall. Besides, her phone was burning in her pocket with an incriminating picture that would make Nancy very happy. She didn’t need to do anything else, right?

“Not your business, dingus,” Robin snapped back at Steve, who looked completely thrown off by that kind of response from a strange girl.

“My… It’s… It’s my house!” Steve protested, coming to stand in front of her with a confused frown on his face.

“Whoa, congratulations,” Robin replied, as deadpan as humanly possible.

She did not expect Steve to snort at her words. What was wrong with this guy that gravitated toward the first person at his own party that was actively mean to him?

“Shut up,” Steve said, not very convincingly. “Do you want a drink?”

Robin narrowed her eyes at him, considered all her options, and begrudgingly said, “Sure…”

She just wanted one last drink before finally ditching the party. How was she supposed to know that giving Steve Harrington ten minutes of her life was enough to cement the beginning of a friendship for the ages? She just hoped this wouldn’t complicate things anymore. She had no way to expect that that day would change their lives, that they would discover they perfectly fit as best friends, that she wouldn’t be able to say no to hanging out with Steve again, which would lead to finding out how much he had changed since dating Nancy, and how good they could be for each other. 

Nancy respected Chrissy Cunningham. She didn’t agree with some of her decisions, like whatever happened with Jason from the basketball team, and even more so, giving up Robin Buckley just because another girl started a rumor. But she had a healthy amount of respect for Chrissy. Nancy was well aware of how difficult, draining, and even dehumanizing could be to be on top of the social pyramid of Rosehill. In order to survive and still smile as generously as she did, Chrissy had to be much smarter and stronger than anyone could suspect. For that same reason, if Nancy wanted to get some dirt on Vickie, she had to be very smart about when and how to talk to Chrissy. Long story short, Nancy trapped Chrissy shortly after Chrissy hung out with Eddie Munson. That could only mean one thing.

“You’re so nice, Nancy,” Chrissy said, a dopey smile on her face and more relaxed than Nancy had ever seen her. “We should be friends! We should all be friends. We… we need more friends, don’t you think?”

“You don’t have enough friends?” Nancy asked, trying to keep her tone casual and her smile professional and not at all like she knew the other girl was high as a kite. “In the cheerleading squad, the basketball team… the band?”

Chrissy’s eyes immediately widened, though they weren’t exactly focused on Nancy. “The band,” Chrissy sighed dreamily. “Yes, I’m friends with… the trumpet. The… playing trumpet. Vickie trumpet.”

“I see,” Nancy looked down to pretend she was taking notes and keep herself from laughing. Though, if she was being completely honest with herself, Chrissy’s immediate excitement at the mere suggestion of Vickie made Nancy think about Robin, which made her struggle even more to hide her smile. She wasn’t supposed to think this much about Robin, she had work to do. So she did her best to push the thoughts about that beautiful, mysterious, and sweet girl to the back of her mind as well as she could and continued with her interrogation. “Are you good friends? Do you trust each other? Can you speak for her moral compass? Do you have any plans for college? It’s… it’s all important for… statistics, you know?”

“Numbers,” Chrissy agreed, nodding slowly with a grave look on her face. A second later, she was brightening up again. “No college for us though, no sir. I am just so tired, you know? I need… to breathe. For like, five years. Hm… Oh, and also, Vickie lied when she said she got into Julliard just because all the other band kids got in. She doesn’t even like band. But just so you know, I swore I would never tell anybody, so don’t… Don’t let me talk about it, okay?”

Nancy smiled a Cheshire's cat’s smile. Anyone slightly more sober than Chrissy would’ve been immediately worried. “You can trust me,” Nancy said with all the conviction of someone ready to use that information for their own advantage. Well, technically, she was doing this for Robin. God, she couldn’t help to tell Robin all about it, to see her reaction, see her smile, and hopefully, earn a hug or more…  Well, it turned out that not thinking about Robin Buckley was much more difficult than Nancy excepted. Feeling like this about other girls was not a new thing for Nancy, but she’d only accepted it very recently, and Robin was the first girl that made Nancy genuinely think about doing something about her feelings. All of that could wait though. She had to stay focused on her revenge. It was all part of her plan, right? Helping Robin was a means to an end. Later, she’d have to stop and think if these circumstances had turned them into friends. It certainly felt like something a little bigger than they had anticipated, something more than friends. 

If she was being honest, Robin was concerned about how out of place she didn’t feel in Nancy’s bedroom anymore. The first times, she had her guard up, she snooped around, she questioned and criticized everything silently and even out loud, much to Nancy’s annoyance. But now… Now it’s been weeks of planning, weeks of Nancy messing with Robin’s appearance, weeks of getting distracted and ending up talking about anything and everything as the hours passed with the two of them locked in that room together. It wasn’t perfect, and she was still hiding many things from Nancy. For example, her growing friendship with Steve Harrington. But she had a feeling Nancy was hiding a thing or two too.

“Why are you so thoughtful? Don’t tell me you’re having second thoughts about all of this. I’ve already paid for everything,” Nancy said. She was standing by her closet, planning her outfit for the big revenge day because that was the kind of person Nancy Wheeler was.

“No, no, I’m not… Not thoughtful at all. Not a single thought right now, in fact. Second thoughts? Me? No, no, never. I don’t, uh, I don’t know what you’re talking about, I… I’m okay ,” Robin said, forcing herself to shut up and put an end to her ranting before it got out of hand. She was laying on the floor, with her legs resting on Nancy’s bed, and she was lying through her teeth, because that was the kind of person Robin Buckley was.

“You can tell me,” Nancy said firmly, as she said most things, but then she approached Robin and sat down on the bed next to Robin’s feet. “It won’t change my plans, I will hate you and will probably go after you next, but you can tell me if you’ve changed your mind.”

Robin gulped nervously and started moving away. With Nancy sitting on the bed, Robin lying on the ground at her feet, Nancy wearing a skirt, yeah, Robin needed some space. “You could never go after me, I’m too cute,” Robin grinned, stumbling back up to her feet and sitting beside Nancy. “ And , I know all your darkest secrets.”

“Right,” Nancy smiled and looked down. Bashful was not a common expression to find on Nancy Wheeler, but Robin thought it suited her. “Well, you’re not wrong. In both statements. We’re a team now, aren’t we?”

Robin didn’t mean for her smile to be so genuine, but she didn’t expect Nancy to warm up to her quite like this. Was that flirting? Was Nancy flirting with her? “Let’s go get them, Wheeler,” Robin said, and offered her hand out to Nancy, who nodded, thoroughly amused at Robin’s antics and shook her hand. Who would have blamed Robin for going the extra mile and placing a kiss on the back of Nancy’s hand? She was sealing a promise of sorts there. And she was instantly rewarded with Nancy blushing profusely and staring at her in a way that made Robin gulp nervously. 

It was a wild day at Rosehill, quite literally. Robin understood she was new at the school so she couldn’t be certain this wasn’t just regular behavior at Rosehill, but she had a feeling it simply wasn’t, it was just the consequences to… Nancy Wheeler. 

Nancy could’ve kissed Robin when Robin first gave her the idea. In fact, she had really, really wanted to kiss Robin for her idea. Every day they spent together, Nancy only wanted her more and more. But she pushed herself to stay focused on their plans, and Robin’s latest idea to ruin Vickie’s life. As suggested by Robin, Nancy paid a complete stranger, an actor that pretended to be a representative from Julliard, and the man showed up to personally congratulate all the students from band that were accepted, as well as drop a line about Vickie’s hurtful disinterest in them. Robin watched it all unfold and escalate at an alarming pace. The other band kids lost their shit, Vickie tried to quit with a dramatic exit that would cost the school a couple of new instruments, and promptly got herself suspended. Overdramatic and wounded, the betrayed band nerds refused to play for the basketball game that day, which inspired a wave of hysteria in the cheerleaders, who were already hanging by a thread after Chrissy, their charismatic leader, skipped school to go check on Vickie. Stressed and following the example of the rebellion of their leaders, the cheerleaders didn't even return to class. They scattered around the school, crying in the bathrooms, vandalizing their own uniforms, and joining in the mayhem of the band nerds. This, of course, unsettled the regular population of the student body, who took the opportunity to shoot their shot with the cheerleaders and abandon their classes. But there was nothing like the collective breakdown of the basketball team.

Not only was the team suddenly left without a band and cheerleaders to hype them up, but absolutely nobody was paying attention to them. This was a group that demanded attention, and they weren’t afraid to get it through any means necessary. The problem was that halfway through physically dragging random students across the school to make them watch them play basketball, the second half of Nancy’s place went into action. All at once, everyone’s phones lighted up with a new notification, an anonymous account just sent all of them a very clear, incriminating, embarrassing picture of Steve “The Hair” Harrington hiding from the cool kids at his party to bring snacks to a bunch of kids he had hiding in a room upstairs. Theories and rumors spread like wildfire, and things weren’t looking good for the King of Rosehill.

Robin and Nancy were hiding in Nancy’s car in the parking lot of the school, only missing a bowl of popcorn as they watched Steve getting pretty much kicked out of the basketball team by force. They dragged him outside, pushing him around, mocking him relentlessly while some of them made the worst accusations possible. Robin wasn’t sure she could keep looking. Instead, she focused on Nancy, who didn’t exactly look overjoyed, but Nancy was difficult to read and a pleasure to observe either way.

“Congratulations,” Nancy finally said, looking away from the fight breaking out between the basketball team and turning to her side to face Robin, her eyes sparkling. “We did it.”

“Thank you,” Robin replied. “My therapist lied when she said that watching Vickie run away crying wouldn’t heal me.”

Nancy laughed, honest and easy. She was more relaxed than Robin had ever seen her. Nancy’s hands were just itching to reach out for Robin, and Robin wasn’t doing much better, as troubling as that feeling was for her.

“I should thank you too, Robin,” Nancy said, “I couldn’t have done this without… What the hell is going on there?”

“Oh shit,” Robin whispered.

“ Mike?! ” Nancy gasped.

Events were taking a turn. Apparently, rumors traveled even faster than expected. Out of nowhere, a group of six kids, some of which Robin barely recognized from her spy mission at Steve’s party, showed up. One of them, shockingly, turned out to be Nancy’s younger brother. The kids threw themselves at the much taller, older, stronger basketball players, until they could stand in front of Steve in a protective circle. The team was at a loss for a moment too long. Before they could figure out how to get rid of the kids, the human shield around Steve got even stronger. It started with a few cheerleaders and then girls from every clique at school were taking their opportunity to stand up for Steve, undoubtedly dreaming it would turn into a date in the near future. The brutes of the basketball team were helpless against this defense mechanism.

“No, no, no,” Nancy said with growing desperation. “What are they doing? What’s going on?”

“Uh, oh,” Robin grimaced, watching as a group of girls swarmed Steve, kneeling down around him to fuss over him and give him all their care and attention. “I, um, I think we might have done Steve a favor, Nance.”

“Don’t call me Nance,” Nancy snapped. “Fuck!” She hit the steering wheel of her car and groaned loudly. “I can’t believe this! They’re pitying him? Holy shit! Of course they are! He ruins my life and I’m the monster, I try to ruin him and he only gets extra love? What the fuck?!”

“Hey, it’s going to be okay,” Robin said, reaching out to try and put a hand on Nancy’s back to offer comfort, but she was quickly shaken back to reality.

“Don’t. Don’t touch me! I don’t want your pity, Robin!” Nancy exclaimed, practically jumping in her seat in order to move out of Robin’s reach, even if Robin had already flinched away as if she’d been burned. Nancy didn’t even notice the dark look that passed over Robin’s earnest eyes. She was too busy slamming her hands over the steering wheel again. “What the hell am I going to do now? How am I going to destroy him? Should I go after the kids? No, my brother is one of them, but… fuck! We need a new plan. We have to come up with something tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow's my birthday,” Robin pointed out, “We could…”

“We will come up with a new plan,” Nancy said, looking deeply into Robin’s eyes. This time she was the one to reach out. She placed her hand on Robin’s jaw, that particular spot below her ear, letting her fingertips reach around her neck, a little too intimate. She had a firm grip and still, the pressure of her fingertips on Robin’s skin was surprisingly gentle. “We’ll figure this out,” Nancy promised.

“Sure,” Robin whispered. Despite her tone and the frown on her face, she was very confident in Nancy’s words. They would figure this out. One way or another.

Despite everything, every wild and unexpected turn in her life, that Friday Robin was coming back home after her surprise birthday party with a genuine smile on her face. Who would’ve thought that Steve Harrington would turn out to be such a good friend? Probably only one other person would be more surprised than she was about this sudden turn of events, but it was true. Nancy had manipulated and tailored Robin’s entire existence to appeal to the version of Steve Harrington she knew. But, that fateful day at the party, Robin had opted for dropping the act and being herself, sure that it would spook Steve away. Instead, Steve got attached to her with the loyalty and enthusiasm of little kids choosing at random their best friends in kindergarten.

Robin, who had been an outcast for most of her life, a status that only worsened after that terrible betrayal during the worst summer of her life, struggled to let down her guard for Steve. Fortunately for both of them, he didn’t mind her sarcasm and sharp edges, he stood by unchangeable and reliable until the day that “dingus”, somehow, became a term of endearment. It turned out that when he really wanted to plan a party, Steve wasn’t that bad at it. The biggest surprise for Robin was the fact that she got along quite well with the random assortment of children that Steve was friends with. She’d never felt like she belonged, and for the longest time she told herself she would never want such a thing, but she had to admit, it didn’t feel quite bad. 

It was a night full of surprises though. Steve dropped Robin at her house and drove away. Robin was halfway through the front yard when she noticed something on the front door of her house. Her parents weren’t home, unsurprisingly, but the door was left ajar and taped to it there was a picture. She recognized it very well. It was her picture. Someone had been snooping around her bedroom. The thought immediately brought a smile to her face. Robin yanked the picture off the door and entered her house.

“Honey, I’m home!” Robin exclaimed. She made it all the way to her bedroom, where Nancy was sitting primly and patiently on the edge of her bed. “This was a nice touch,” Robin grinned, holding up the picture and then letting it fall on the floor between them. 

The picture in question was an old photograph from summer camp. There were about two dozen faces in the picture, including Robin, Chrissy, and Vickie, but most importantly, one of the faces had been furiously scratched beyond recognition. The only reason Nancy knew the kid’s identity was because that was her face in the picture.

“It was me,” Nancy said, pointing at the picture. “You did all of this to get back at me .”

“Well, of course it was you!” Robin laughed and leaned against the wall of her bedroom with a smile sharp enough to kill. “There was no one else as disgustingly fucked up as you were at such a tender age, Nance .”

“You are fucking insane,” Nancy said through greeted teeth. 

“Coming from you, I’ll take that as a compliment,” Robin said, waving her hand and bowing mockingly. “I am curious though. How did you finally figure it out?”

“Mike texted me,” Nancy said. She was barely able to breathe through her contained anger. “You’ve been spending so much time at my house that he thought you were my girlfriend . Safe to say, he was shocked when he found out that you were Steve’s mysterious new best friend he made a party for. He texted me like, Hey, Nancy, why is your girlfriend best friends with the guy you hate, and why aren’t you invited to her birthday party? It didn’t make any sense. It was wrong . Something was wrong and I needed to find out what it was. I didn’t believe him at first, I was so stupid I didn’t believe that you would betray me like that. So I came here, convinced that I would find you at home, but when reality hit, when I realized you really were at a party with Steve Herrington, I started thinking, and thinking, and thinking about you. Your motivations, your choices, your timing, your convenient ideas. Breaking and entering was easy and finding the incriminating picture was even easier. You pretty much have a shrine dedicated to ruining my life on your wall, you asshole.”

“Hm,” Robin made a faux meditative gesture and then pointed at Nancy. “You know, that attitude is why you don’t get invited to birthday parties.”

“Oh, fuck off,” Nancy exclaimed and jumped to a standing position. “Is all this because I didn’t remember your birthday?”

“I told you about it yesterday , you self-absorbed piece of shit,” Robin seethed. For the first time, Nancy caught a glimpse of Robin losing her composure. Robin wound up with watery eyes and trembling lips instead of Robin as a heartless mastermind, but the illusion was quickly wiped away. “Now, sit down, and listen to me,” Robin said slowly, standing up to use her height to her advantage to look down at Nancy, and she pushed Nancy back down to the edge of the bed.

“Oh, please enlighten me,” Nancy rolled her eyes, but stayed put. She was walking a fine line between her deep hurt at the realization that Robin had been playing her all this time, and an embarrassing combination of fury and fear of what was to come.

“Summer camp, four years ago,” Robin said, starting her story. “Naturally, I didn’t want to be there. People hated me at my regular school, why would complete strangers like me, right? But there was one exception. Barbara Holland. The prettiest, sweetest girl on Earth, a goddamned angel that from day one and for reasons I’ll never understand, she made me her friend. No other kid had ever , ever been as kind to me as Barb. I’m sure you’ll understand why I fell in love with her during that first half of the summer. And that’s where you come in, Nance. There’s when you get jealous, because Barb was your best friend, and people aren’t allowed to even think about anything other than perfect Nancy Wheeler, right?”

“I bet you were spying on us, weren’t you? You must have overheard some conversation and realized my feelings for Barb before she ever did. Next thing I know, Barb is telling me that we can’t keep hanging out because her friend Nancy thinks that I’m dangerous and gross, isn’t that what you said, Nancy? But, oh, that’s not the end of the story. Because you didn’t just tell Barb, you told the entire camp. You stood and watch as those rumors caught fire, sometimes even literally, and all those kids made my life fucking miserable because you couldn’t stand that your friend paid attention to anyone other than you!”

Robin paused. She’d lost her calm visibly more than she’d planned. She closed her eyes for a moment and took three deep breaths, getting herself under control, something that Nancy was a hundred percent sure she wasn’t meant to find attractive. When Robin’s eyes opened again, they were colder than Nancy could’ve thought was possible.

“But do you want to know the worst part?” Robin asked. “The worst part is that I told you the entire story when we met, and you didn’t even remember. You ruined my life and I wasn’t even worth keeping in your memory.”

Well, Nancy couldn’t exactly argue most of those statements. If she tried, she was sure Robin wouldn’t listen. She couldn’t even look at her. But the moment that she turned her face to the side to hide herself from Robin’s heartbroken and unforgiving gaze, Robin’s finger flew to her chin and forced her to face her again.

“Look at me when I speak, Nance,” Robin said.

Immediately, Nancy swatted her hand away and hissed, “Don’t touch me.” Robin did take a step back, but she was smiling, and nothing would’ve infuriated Nancy more at that moment. “So what? Are you going to pretend you’re better than me? You destroyed Vickie and Steve for literally no reason.”

Robin scoffed and went back to leaning against the wall, one foot prompted on the wall and one annoying charming smile directed at Nancy. “It’s called collateral damage sweetie,” Robin said. “And, to be fair, Vickie and Chrissy were among the friends that ran away from me at camp because of you. And, even if he’s changed, Steve was wrong for what he did to you. I mean, I’m glad you got hurt, but it was still wrong of him, you know? Besides, I did both of them a favor. They’re free! They’re happier than ever. No more pretending they like band and basketball. Everybody wins. Except you, of course, but that’s what you get for being the villain,” Robin finished with a smirk and a wink at Nancy.

Nancy held her hands into tight fists, but she could feel herself closer and closer to losing her composure with every passing second.

“Well, congratulations, Robin,” Nancy said, looking up at her with her best attempt at a heartless smile in these circumstances. “You played with my feelings and you foiled my plans to get back at Steve. Very impressive job.”

“Oh,” Robin blinked, and Nancy almost believed that surprise was genuine. “Oh, baby,” Robin said, and as if she were incapable of staying away for too long, she approached Nancy again, looking down at her with the one thing Nancy never wanted from her. Pity. “You still don’t get it, do you?” Robin asked her, and this time Nancy was too far gone to even flinch away when Robin gently put her palm on Nancy’s jaw. “Hacking my phone to steal a picture of my best friend and send it to the school might get you expelled. Selling drugs to Chrissy Cunningham might get you a little arrested. But faking the identity of a Julliard representative? Baby, you should’ve said goodbye to Yale ages ago. Your life is over, Nancy Wheeler. But it’s okay, we’ll always have the shared trauma, you know?”

That was the worst weekend of Nancy’s life. She spent it in a haze of anxiety, regret, and utter heartbreak. She spent every second just waiting for a terrible call, for someone, anyone, to find out what she did. Or it could be worse. Maybe the school would call her parents to tell them she was getting expelled for sending everyone Steve’s picture. Maybe the police would show up at her house and accuse her of distributing drugs around the school. Maybe she’d live with that black hole of fear in her chest for weeks until she received a letter from Yale telling her, basically, that her future was fucked. She didn’t know which punch would come first. She didn’t even know if Robin was done with her. The absolute worst part of all of it? She wasn’t a hundred percent sure if she wanted Robin to be done with her. She certainly didn’t feel like she was done with her. But how could she get back at her? How was she ever going to get back up? How was she supposed to ignore the fact that somewhere along the way of going through the messed up plans that were never even hers, to begin with, Robin stole her heart too?

After a full weekend of pure agony, being physically sick over the extreme dread she was feeling, Nancy finally woke up on Monday feeling better. It wasn’t much, but there was a difference. There was a spark of hope in her chest. There was the stubborn belief that maybe this wasn’t the end for her, maybe she still had a chance to rise from the ashes like a phoenix. Maybe Robin had killed her, but she refused to believe that everything was a lie. She had gotten to know Robin, and she could hurt her just as badly. Did she want to hurt the girl she had stupidly fallen for even after everything? Well… she could think about it later. First, she had to go to school, make sure Robin still hadn’t ruined her life, and find a way to stop her and, hopefully, hurt her just as badly before Robin had the chance.

Of course Robin was ahead of her.

The first thing Nancy noticed when she walked out of her house was Robin’s stupid smirk aimed at her from the driver’s seat of Robin’s car parked in front of her car.

“Hey, princess,” Robin said, with a sickeningly sweet voice. “I had a feeling you had a pretty shitty weekend so I thought I should give you a ride to school today. No need to thank me, I know I’m your knight in shining armor.”

“You’re a fucking witch at best, Robin,” Nancy said, barely loud enough for Robin to hear and give her a roaring laugh. But Nancy ignored her and confidently walked toward her car.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” Robin said when Nancy put her hand on the car’s handle. Nancy looked at her sharply and Nancy raised the palms of her hands defensively. “I didn’t actually put a bomb in your car, you idiot,” Robin laughed, “But, remember the first day of school when I gave you a ride? Yeah, well, let’s say I know how to make sure your car stops working. Now, come on, get in the car, babe. Stop playing hard to get.”

Nancy stopped to consider her options. She closed her eyes tightly, and considered calling a taxi or staying home and accepting her doom. But, fuck it, she wasn’t about to give up now, no matter how awful it felt. Keep your friends close and your enemies closer, and all that. She walked toward Robin’s car with her head high and when she reached it she said, “You know I fucking hate you, right?” In response, Robin’s smile only brightened, and she winked at Nancy. It made Nancy experience a whole new wave of pain. She rolled her eyes and waved her hand at Robin. “Move over,” she said, “I’m driving.” Somehow, it wasn’t all that surprising that Robin complied with the order.

The drive from Nancy’s house to Rosehill was a complete nightmare and it felt endless. It was a messed up reflection of their first drive, just in the opposite direction. This time, Robin talked the whole way through too. There was something vicious about the way she talked, so confidently and calm about the way she was about to bring Nancy down and irreversibly ruin her life. But there was something else… Nancy couldn’t quite put her finger on it, but she hadn’t spent all these weeks by Robin’s side and falling for her, insane and manipulative or not, for her to miss the little details. There was something Robin was holding back. And she was definitely nervous in a way Nancy hadn’t seen her before. She was trying too hard to taunt Nancy here. But before Nancy could connect the dots, her patience with Robin’s test ran out.

“So, with the school, I figured it would be pretty easy,” Robin was saying, “you got a warning after you broke the nose of their golden boy, right? They’ll easily expel you for sending everyone Steve’s picture. The drug situation is a little tricky, but I figured out how to shift the evidence from Eddie Munson to you, don’t worry about that. Now, about Yale…”

“Shut up,” Nancy said through gritted teeth.

“Excuse me?” Robin smiled.

“Shut up, Robin,” Nancy repeated. It was a warning.

“Oh? Did I touch a sensitive subject, sweetheart?”

“Shut up, Robin. Shut up, shut up, shut up!” Nancy snapped, closing her eyes momentarily and slamming her hands on the steering wheel.

“Make me,” Robin said. She wasn’t smiling anymore. She was daring Nancy with her eyes. Meanwhile, Nancy’s eyes kept shifting between the road ahead and Robin’s face. The road to her own destruction, the breathtaking blue eyes of the person that destroyed her. The road. Robin’s eyes now pleading with her as her voice practically begged, “ Make me .”

It probably wasn’t what Robin had in mind, but a second later Nancy was hastily turning the wheel and crashing her car against a wall on the side of the road.

A pounding headache. Smoke coming from the front of the car. Pain in several points of her body. When Nancy opened her eyes, she couldn’t find it in herself to feel very proud of what she did.

Nancy looked to her side and felt her heart skip a beat at the sight of the passenger’s seat. Robin was slumped on the seat and there was a thin trail of blood on the side of her head.

“Fuck. Robin?” Nancy said. “Robin? Robin, come on!” Nancy insisted, and reached out to Robin. She put her hand on Robin’s face and exhaled with tremendous relief when she felt Robin wince and whine at the touch. “Oh, thank God,” Nancy sighed, “Come on, let’s get you out of here.”

Because she purposely crashed the car from Robin’s side, she had to open her door and drag Robin’s body over. When she was trying to get Robin down from the car, Robin finally seemed to wake up and gather her bearings. They dropped down to sit on the pavement beside Robin’s crashed car and stared at each other as if they were seeing one another for the first time all over again.

“You scared me for a second there,” Nancy said.

Robin blinked at her and then just asked, “Did you just crash my car?”

“Yeah,” Nancy shrugged.

Robin’s eyes widened, but that seemed to hurt her small wound and she immediately winced. “That’s fair I guess,” she said quietly.

“Robin, what the hell are we doing?” Nancy asked her, exhausted. “Why didn’t you do anything during the weekend? I’m sorry, but I don’t buy that you were just torturing me. I didn’t want to actually kill you right now, I really don’t want to think of ways to hurt you, and I have a feeling you don’t want to hurt me anymore either.”

Robin looked physically pained to hear Nancy say all of that. She looked away, and then closed her eyes tightly, fighting the tears, but she wouldn’t admit what Nancy said was true, not yet.

“Does any of this actually make you feel better?!” Nancy asked her. “Because I’m fucking miserable!”

“Of course I don’t feel better! I feel like shit!” Robin snapped at her, but immediately looked away and added under her breath, “Might be because an insane woman just tried to fucking kill me though.”

“Robin, I’m sorry,” Nancy said, and she was rewarded with Robin’s eyes focusing on her again. “I’m so fucking sorry for what I did to you back then. I’m sorry I forgot about it and about you, I’m sorry I didn’t get it when you told me, and I’m sorry it took me this long to apologize! I know how messed up it was what I did, and I know there’s no way to go back in time and fix it but, for what it’s worth, I think you deserve to know the truth.”

“What?” Robin asked, sounding just about as tired and frustrated as Nancy felt.

“That summer, I was never jealous of you for taking Barb’s attention,” Nancy said, carefully, and she ignored Robin’s disbelieving scoff to go on. “I was… I was jealous of Barb.” There was no hint of understanding in Robin’s eyes and Nancy sighed deeply. “I was jealous of Barb, okay? I was jealous because she had all the attention of this mysterious, cool new girl that nobody else knew. There was this tall girl with the most adorable freckles and she was a little awkward but she was funny and sweet and that first night, when we were all seated around the fire, that girl played guitar and sang a beautiful song and I could swear I fell in love right then and there. I liked that girl, I liked a girl, and I was so fucking scared of it! I was terrified, Robin. You scared me to death. I wasn’t ready to admit any of these feelings to myself. So I did the worst thing possible, and I acted out of fear, and none of this justifies what I did to you, but I… I just thought you should know. I know I ruined your life, and I know you’re going to ruin mine. But I want you to know that if I could, I would go back and do things very differently, because even after everything, I… I still really, really like that girl from summer camp.”

Nancy wasn’t sure what to expect from Robin. Tears, insults, silence, there were many options, but she didn’t even have the time to consider any of them. Instead, she got Robin closing the distance between them in a flash and crashing her lips against Nancy, taking her by complete surprise. Robin’s hand was on the back of her neck, her kiss was ruthless, the space between smelled like spilled blood and the smoke still coming from Robin’s car… it was fucking perfect.

Just when Nancy started to relax into the kiss, Robin pulled back sharply. She cradled Nancy’s face with her other hand, and Nancy felt a little dizzy thinking about how gentle and malicious those hands could be. “I hate you so much,” Robin said, smiling at Nancy. 

“Yeah,” Nancy said with a matching smile, “I love you too, Robin.”

They kissed each other again, taking their time this time. Their lips fit together perfectly, they moved in sync, they teased each other, and took turns biting each other’s bottom lips. They couldn’t keep their hands off each other. When the police and an ambulance arrived at the place where a passerby reported a car crash, the officers and the paramedics found Robin and Nancy sitting there on the ground, surrounded by the perfect chaos they created for each other, kissing like there was no tomorrow.