Archive of Our Own ^beta

Robin first sees it at a Friday night barbecue at the Wheelers’.

She rings the doorbell and Mike answers the door in his Hellfire shirt, eating a Twizzler.

She can hear voices in the living room, and further. Eddie and Dustin yelling about something and TOTO playing under it. Max yelling, too, like some kind of referee.

“Hey,” Mike says, the red candy hanging out of his mouth. “Steve’s not here yet.”

“Good to know,” she responds, pushing past him.

What she doesn’t say is, Last time I was here I came in through your sister’s bedroom window. She promised to use the door this time.

They’ve gathered in the living room, sprawled out around bowls of potato chips and plastic cups full of Coke. Most of the kids are on the couches, or pacing wildly, like restless, frenetic Eddie.

Will’s sitting on a pillow by the coffee table. He smiles at her, waves. It seems… half-hearted?

Robin gives him a salute, face stern, and he smiles bigger.

That’s better.

“Buckley!” Eddie calls, making grabby hands at her—at the air—from ten feet away. “Buckley, man, thank God, okay. Finally. Somebody with real taste.”

“With what now?”

“Just ignore him,” says Dustin, flopping onto the couch next to El, who’s pulled herself close to Mike, now that he’s seated, too. “He’s not making any sense. He’s senile.”

“So senile,” Lucas cackles.

Eddie pushes forward, undaunted and honed-in on Robin.

“Listen. Seriously. Would you please help me enlighten these dear, darling childrem in the ways of actual, proper music? They can’t go on like this. I won’t have it.”

Not a TOTO fan, then.

Robin blinks, put on the spot.

Why is she so good at never shutting up unless somebody asks her to talk?

“Uh…”

A voice from behind her saves her:

“When you host a Hellcats Meet-Up-”

“Hellfire,” says half the room, who Robin didn’t even realise were paying attention.

“Shut up, whatever,” Nancy says. “When you have it at your house, you can pick the music. Our neighbours don’t want to listen to Mötley Crüe.”

“I’m not suggesting…” And Eddie stops. Looks at Nancy with his head tilted. “Actually, y’know what? Mötley’s better than what I had in mind. You have my respect, Wheeler.”

Nancy rolls her eyes, which gives her an excuse to shift them over to Robin.

Who feels the attention like a hand on her heart. Squeezing.

Nancy’s perched on the arm of one of the couches like she’s settled, relaxed, invested only in preventing the chaos overtaking her house from taking permanent root.

Robin knows better. Knows what Nancy Wheeler looks like when she’s waiting for something. For someone.

“Hi,” Robin says, quiet, once she’s close enough to do so.

“Hi,” Nancy says, quiet, once she’s found a way to shift her knee so it’s touching Robin’s hip.

Her eyes are loud. Loud and warm and creased at the edges.

Robin resists the instinct to lay her hand on that knee. Tries not to linger in the moment too long. Tries and fails, like usual.

Doesn’t matter. Everybody else is too wrapped up in Eddie monologuing about Mötley Crüe while Dustin clamps his hands over his ears and la la las his way through.

She can sneak something in.

Something, she thinks with a pang, so long as it’s easy to disguise as something else.

Nobody knows they’re together.

Or, she hasn’t told anyone. Miraculously has not put her foot in it at all.

Nancy hasn’t told anyone either.

Occasionally when they’re all hanging out and she and Nancy talk or hug or share a bag of chips or who knows, she catches Eddie looking at them funny. Not bad funny, just, funny. He’s never said anything. Neither has she.

She used to think Steve had figured it out. There was a time a few months back when they were newer and less careful that he showed up at Robin’s house to collect her for their opening shift at the video store and Nancy was there. At 6:30am. On a Tuesday. Barefoot, which probably doesn’t matter but felt like an important detail to Robin at the time—you didn’t even have shoes on! she moaned, later, to which Nancy dared to smile and say, No, but at least I had underwear on.

Other times, too, like when Robin only realised well after getting home from a night at the arcade or some bowling that her jacket—her hair—smelled a whole hell of a lot like Nancy Wheeler’s perfume. Surely Steve memorised that scent in his brief time dating her. Surely he knows vanilla and raspberry equals Nancy equals my best friend’s hooking up with my ex-girlfriend. Surely—surely—he’s gotten it.

It’s become abundantly clear he has not.

The longer it goes on like this, the more Robin has a hard time imagining ever saying anything ever.

Not that she wants to.

(Sometimes she wants to.)

Honestly, she wishes she didn’t have to—make an announcement, or whatever.

She also wishes she didn’t have to worry about how the hell people’d react, given how Steve’s still the only person aware of Robin’s whole… thing.

At any rate, it would not be the best idea either of them have ever had if Robin stuck her tongue in Nancy’s mouth by way of hello in front of a room full of all the dinguses.

Half-speed’s best. Quarter-speed.

Whatever, Robin thinks, ignoring the dual tug of anxiety and guilt somewhere in the middle of her chest. Still counts.

Nancy pulls Robin into a hug now, a friendly greeting, quick but firm. Her hand slides down Robin’s back before removing itself when they shift out of it. She smells nice. Vanilla and raspberry. Robin feels calmer than she has all day.

“Hi,” she says, forgetting they’ve already done that part.

“Hi,” Nancy says back, meaning it different this time.

Anyway. The point is dinner.

They end up in the yard with Mrs Wheeler ferrying burgers and sausages and buns from the kitchen to the patio and Lucas and Mike fight over manning the grill and Steve shows up and Nancy makes him put an apron on and slice tomatoes.

And here it is.

They line up for the vague procession of bun-meat-salad-sauce Max has got laid out on the table, and Will takes two paper plates and hands one to Mike with this… look… on his face.

“Thanks, man,” Mike says.

Will swallows.

“Sure,” he says, smiling. His gaze darts to El, and back. He fiddles with the edge of his plate with his thumb, flicking at it. “You—You can go first.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah. Totally.”

Mike does.

Pulls El in behind him, too.

Will filters himself to the back of the haphazard line, and his eyes don’t leave Mike, except when he seems to catch himself looking.

Is that… affection?

Adoration?

Longing?

Robin almost guffaws out loud at the thought. Eddie must’ve spiked the Coke again.

No—Robin knows better.

Eddie and Dustin have jumped the queue, piling food onto their plates from the other side of the table and yelling at Max for yelling at them. El watches from the safety of her spot next to Mike, her standard mix of moderately amused and equally confused. Lucas leaps in to defend Max, who shoves Lucas for thinking she needs defending, which makes Dustin and Eddie cackle and the argument restarts. None of it means anything. But, too late. Robin’s seen it already.

She’s supposed to be listening to Steve talk about the girl he went out with the night before and she can’t keep her attention off Will.

Has the feeling, somehow, that something’s up with him.

How could that even be?

What did she see, other than Will, watching his best friend and his best friend’s girlfriend?

Nothing.

At all.

That’s what.

////

She sees it again at the video store when the gang comes in to raid the new releases.

Max drags Lucas to the World Cinema section, a meagre two shelves Robin scavenged last month out of another section. Girl after her own heart.

The rest are more chaotic, and there’s other, legit, customers around. It’s almost closing.

The hooligans have garbage timing.

“Steve,” Robin begs, nerves fraying. “Would you control your children, for Jesus’ sake.”

“Dorks,” he hisses, smacking Dustin around the ear for no reason. “Pipe down, alright? There’s real people in here.”

“We’re real people,” says El, in that sweetly oblivious way of hers. “Aren’t we?”

Next to her, Mike’s eating out of a paper bag of gummy worms. He shrugs. “Sure.”

And Will’s hand dives into the candy bag, pinching some.

“Hey!”

“Too slow!” Will shouts, darting away—and Mike races in pursuit and Steve rushes off after the pair of them.

Robin thinks about tossing her apron on the counter and walking out into the mid-afternoon sunshine and calling Nancy at the newspaper from the phone booth across the road and making elaborate plans for an awesome evening together, and then a guy with a ponytail comes up asking for Karate Kid 2.

She resists the urge to tell him it’s technically The Karate Kid Part II and adds him to the waitlist.

The first one’s better.

“Have you seen this?”

Robin turns to find Max holding out a video and Lucas nowhere in sight. She must have cut him loose and he’s gone next door to look at the sports goods.

I’ve literally seen everything in here, Robin thinks, taking the video off her.

“Wait—Alien?”

“Yeah.”

“Of course I’ve seen Alien. You haven’t seen Alien?”

Max looks at her with her trademark Your point? face.

Robin stares at her.

“But it’s—But it’s Alien. Sigourney Weaver? Chest-burster? In space nobody can hear you scream?”

Max shrugs.

“Billy made it sound boring.”

“Bor—Okay, well, no, it’s actually—wow—it is creepy and scary and cool as fuck and everything about it is goddamn incredible and you—Just, trust me.”

“Weren’t all the reviews shit?”

“Critics don’t know anything. God—you’re getting this.”

“I can’t.”

“What?”

“I’m fifteen,” Max says, as if the fact annoys her daily.

Robin looks at Max, and the VHS cover, and Max, and back again.

Oh, right. Rated R.

“I’m getting it for you. And making you watch it.”

Max beams. “Cool.”

“Just this one time. Because of Sigourney Weaver. Who is indescribably awesome and must be seen to be believed.” Hm. Maybe she better tone down her Weaver Worship. Shit, who else is in this movie? “And—And Ridley Scott. Who is also good.”

“Who’s he play?”

Robin sputters. Max chuckles. “Fuck, I’m kidding. I’m not that clueless.”

“You are clueless, young one, but soon, you shall be educated in the ways of quintessential sci-fi cinema and awesome ass-kicking heroines.”

Max rolls her eyes and turns away to head back to the shelves, but something—Robin will die wondering what—stops her. She turns back round.

“We could watch together, if you want.”

Robin honest to god thinks for half a second she must be talking to somebody standing behind her. She half-turns, a returned tape in her hand she was about to stick under the counter to rewind because people are assholes, and stops.

“Me? Really?”

“It’s funner watching with someone else and Lucas talks too much during movies.”

“So do I.”

“Duh, but I’m betting you have infinitely smarter observations than Lucas.”

Robin laughs. Max doesn’t.

Oh. She’s… being serious.

Watching a movie. Like, a social thing.

With Max.

Well. Of all the dinguses, Max is probably like, Robin’s favourite. Except for Steve, fine, who’s more moronic, or Will, who’s less scary than Max’s whole too-cool-for-school, knows-who-she-is, Vans-and-skateboard… thing.

What Robin wouldn’t have given to have been half that self-assured at fifteen.

Hell, at nineteen.

“Yeah,” says Robin. “Okay.”

“Cool. Bring Nancy if you want.”

Robin almost drops the tape.

A sinking feeling sinks through her. Sinkety sinky sunk.

Oh? Fuck?

No, wait, just—be cool. It’s fine. Max is just being nice.

By inviting Nancy. To our movie night. Out of all the other people in our shared extended friendship circle she could’ve invited.

Nancy.

Who, as far as Max knows, she is absolutely one hundred percent not dating and/or in love with.

Robin tries to be cool.

“Nancy?” she asks, her voice ten octaves too high. “Like, Wheeler?”

“Yes?”

“Why would I bring Nancy?”

“‘Cause you guys like, hang out a lot?”

“Do we?”

“Don’t you?”

Robin lets the question go unanswered. Can’t figure out the right way to agree or disagree.

Oh, yeah, she’s my girlfriend. She’s great. We date. Are dating. And doing other things. Adult things. Things that I am not going to talk about. With you. Or anyone.

“Do whatever,” Max says. “I was just… She seems… okay.”

Max says okay in that way most people describing Nancy Wheeler say it—okay for a stuck-up priss. Okay for a reformed popular girl with a silver spoon still in her mouth. Okay for being kind of a bitch.

It bothers Robin, but it also makes her smirk, just a little, to herself.

She used to think much the same, and then everything changed.

Alright, maybe not everything.

But whatever. Bitchy can be hot.

“She’s very okay,” Robin says, and hopes it doesn’t sound like gushing. “Honestly super cool, once you get to know her.”

Max, to her credit, tries very hard to not look ultra bored.

“I’ll take your word for it,” she says, and scuffs back over to the sci-fi section.

Robin’s still processing the whole interaction when a commotion behind her jerks her in a whole different direction.

Mike and Will are still—still?—careening around the shop with Steve in hot pursuit, and the sound that’s made all this more obvious is the sound of Mike tackling Will to the ground in front of a life-size cardboard cutout of Matthew Broderick looking pleased with himself in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.

Except the dinguses are dingusing more than usual because their antics knock the front door Steve likes to keep propped open—reeks of nerd in here—and it slams shut so hard the glass rattles.

Whether it’s the door or the boys, El, who’s in the middle of spinning round a display stand full of romance movies, startles and turns to the noise, knocking the whole thing over. Videos clatter to the ground, pop out of their cases.

Matthew Broderick topples, too.

“Ohhhhh!” cheers Dustin.

“Guys!”

Robin rounds the counter. Steve’s come to a halt by the door, out of breath, looking guilty. He gestures at Will and Mike, who are on the ground cackling.

“I tried,” Steve says. “Alright? Don’t kill me over it.”

Robin aims a restrained but deliberate kick at Mike’s foot.

“Get up. Shit. You could’ve shattered the damn door.”

Mike guffaws louder, pulling himself off Will, who’s grinning ear to ear. The paper bag of worms lies off to the side, spilled on the disgusting carpet.

“Ass,” Will accuses, still grinning as he half-heartedly kicks at his friend.

“Sorry, man,” says Mike, “gotta respect the gummy worms, y’know?”

Will chuckles some more, then groans lightly, as if only just realising he’s on the floor and his friend tackled him.

“Ow,” he mutters.

“You alright?”

Mike reaches to help him up, absently dusting off his shorts with the other hand. Will looks at his hand a second, and then his friend, and then the hand, and slips his into it, and accepts the boost up to his feet.

“You good?” Mike asks, again, probably because Will hasn’t answered him yet.

Or let go of his hand.

Which he’s still looking at.

“Yeah,” Will says, like he isn’t sure, but he snaps out of it—lets go. And he shoves Mike in the shoulder lightly, grinning. “Dick.”

Will clears his throat and Mike retrieves his gummy worms, happy with that.

El’s appeared, her hands landing on Mike’s back and arm, her frown deep and entirely out of proportion to the situation.

Christ, children are exhausting.

“Okay,” Robin says, before El can start fussing and this can last a second longer. “Go play in some other clubhouse before you get us fired. Out.”

The boys pout. Dustin makes an aw! sound from the other side of the store.

“But we were just-”

“We haven’t even picked out-”

“Nope,” says Steve, finally compelled to actually do something. “You’re gonna break something or get blood on something or both, and Robin’ll make me clean up, and I hate cleaning. So fuck off.”

He grabs them by their collars and drags them to the door and shoves them outside with a kick to Mike’s ass for good measure. They stumble onto the sidewalk, Dustin and El rushing past, laughing like little idiots. Dustin’s got a bag of chips he did not pay for. Robin holds the door open and grinds her teeth together.

“Thanks,” says Max, on her way out to join them, stuffing two videos into her backpack. “Cash is on the counter.”

Steve snags Dustin’s shirt to stop him.

“Henderson.”

Dustin groans, dramatically.

“Fuck. Fine.” He dumps his chip bag in Steve’s outstretched hand. “You were a lot more fun when you were an asshole.”

“Yeah, and then we both grew up, and it turned out super great for me.”

Dustin gives him the finger, and Steve returns in kind, and Robin stands in the doorway with her hand on her hip and her eyes on Will, still, who’s watching Mike, still.

Or maybe he’s watching El fuss over Mike, and the tiny scrape he apparently has on his knee.

Lucas holds a bag of peanuts out to Max to pick from and Steve saunters past Robin and the door swings shut and there they go.

And then Will looks at Robin.

She feels a little caught out by it.

Oops.

So used to being the one doing the observing, she forgets other people, occasionally, do that too.

Will sure does, anyways.

His eyes meet hers. He looks a little caught out, as well.

Robin smiles at him to let him know he’s not.

Waves, even.

Will lifts his hand in a low, shy wave of his own, and a teeny, tiny smile.

Robin’s still watching him go long after he’s gone.

////

She tries not to think about it.

She remembers a time not all that long ago when she’d look at another girl the way she thinks Will looked at Mike at that stupid barbecue and her heart aches for him, and for her past self.

Remembers now, too, countless other times she might’ve seen the same kind of almost-thing from Will, when it comes to Mike, or El, or Mike and El. Which is inconvenient. And some kind of confirmation bias, or whatever it’s called. Has to be.

Aches and aches and aches.

But it’s fine, because she’s not thinking about it.

////

“Do you think it’s different for boys?”

Nancy’s at her dresser, swapping her earrings out. She’s all dressed for the day and Robin hasn’t even gotten out of bed yet.

Nancy’s bed.

It smells like the perfume and her hair spray, and the two of them, Robin thinks. Their skin? That’s creepy. Whatever scent both their bodies leave behind by just… existing together. Asleep and warm.

Nancy says Robin snores. Cute little snuffles, when she’s totally dead to the world.

Robin says Nancy snores, too, like a freight train seconds from derailment, just to make her laugh.

Nancy turns around, a delicate silver chain dangling from her fingers, and her face is full of confusion-meets-affection.

Oh no.

Robin knows that look.

“What? What’d I do?”

Nancy’s head tilts, an endearing smirk stretching her mouth that she’s clearly trying to keep from turning into a full-blown grin.

“Buck,” she says—and yeah, Robin knows that tone, too. “I know I’m very good at figuring out what wavelength you’re on, but I’m not an actual mind reader.”

“So…”

“No idea what you’re talking about.”

Right.

Yeah, good one, Robin.

She winces.

“Oh. Uh…” Robin shuffles to sit up against the pillows. “Being gay?”

That stops her. She throws a Look at Robin while she fishes through the mess on her dresser for the next thing. Lipstick, probably.

“Being gay?”

“Like… I’m a lesbian, right? Total dyke. Super cool with it. But nobody knows, except you and Steve. Because I told you guys. Well, I told Steve. You, I…”

Robin stutters. Her face gets hot. Nancy watches her flail in the mirror’s reflection, lipstick unwound.

“Yeah,” Robin goes on, determined to skate past all of that. “So. It’s like, the people I’ve told know, and that’s it, and as much as I’m like, kinda not interested in the idea of everybody around me knowing my business or like, judging me or whatever, or—ha—telling my mom—the truth is, not many people are really going to like, guess, or anything, because I’m just… me.”

Robin stops.

Nancy waits.

For more.

Because freakin’ duh, Robin’s giving her virtually nothing.

What a remarkable gift she has, for saying so much of so little, all the damn time.

Robin tries again.

“It’s like, unless we start making out in the middle of the grocery store, people aren’t really going to pick it. About either of us. That we’re together.”

“Hey.” Nancy caps the lipstick, her features softening, and comes to sit on the edge of the bed. Her hands slide over and under Robin’s, and Robin hadn’t even realised she’d been fidgeting with her fingers until Nancy gently stills her. Her eyes are dark, round, warm. “If this is about you wanting to revisit the idea of us telling people,” she says, “you know I’m open to that. Really. We just—We do this at your speed.”

Robin has to look away.

A little too intense, being loved quite that much.

It’s not deliberate, in so many words—Robin’s never been more eager to talk about anything in her entire life as much as she wants to talk about being Nancy Wheeler’s girlfriend.

Or having Nancy Wheeler as a girlfriend.

Can never decide which of those feels more incredible, day-to-day.

Probably they cancel each other out.

Mutually exclusive scenarios of heart-stuttering awesomeness.

Which, yeah, they are yet to make any kind of announcement about, because Robin...

>>insert helpless shrug here<<

>>pitchforks, villagers, etc<<

>>the look on her mother’s face<<

They’re coming up on eight months now. Robin keeps waiting for Nancy to crack under the real and reasonable pressure of what is, in the general sense, a secret relationship.

Nancy keeps waiting for Robin to realise the only person she needs to know about her being in love with Robin Buckley is Robin Buckley.

“Yeah,” says Robin. “Totally. But—But if… you get tired of… doing things the way we’re doing them, you’ll say, yeah?”

Nancy wrinkles her nose in a way that’s adorable beyond all reason.

Robin thinks, That’s my girlfriend.

“Yes,” says Nancy, because she knows some questions are too important to answer without words. And she leans forward and kisses her, firm and soft all at once. Adds, with their mouths barely separated, “That’s the deal, isn’t it?”

Robin nods. Keeps her eyes closed and turns her head to nuzzle at her cheek and breathe her in, heartrate halving by the second.

Wasn’t she trying to talk about something?

There was a point she was making, she’s sure of it. A question she had.

It’s fine, she thinks, tells herself. Everything’s totally fine.

“Yeah,” she says. “That’s the deal.”

////

Will comes into the video store on his own. First for everything.

Robin leans her elbows on the counter and watches him approach her with that even, oddly withdrawn gait of his. Like half of him’s trying to vanish and the other half of him’s hoping nobody will notice the half he can’t do anything about.

“William,” says Robin, by way of greeting, and regrets it instantly. She balks, and so does Will, half-chuckling at her. “Nope. Felt weird as soon as I said it. Strike it from the record and accept my sincere apology immediately.”

“Struck.”

“None of the other Goonies with you today?”

“Oh, nah. Think they’re all… busy.”

He’s looking past Robin, and around the shop, which is empty. Steve’s on the world’s longest lunch break and a grand total of no people have come in so far. Mondays.

Robin waits for Will to keep speaking, and he doesn’t.

She starts feeling uneasy. Wonders what this is.

He’s got his jacket and his backpack on, and he’s standing right against the counter with his hands resting on it, against his stomach, one finger digging under the nail of another. He glances at Robin, and at his hands. Swallows. Doesn’t say anything. Until:

“How’ve you been? Have you—Like—Good?”

Robin takes him in. Nods slow.

“Sure. Good is indeed a word you could use to describe my general existence at this moment in time.”

“Cool. Cool.”

“Cool.”

More fidgeting. He licks his lips.

Nothing else.

She’s got E.T. going on the TV hung in the corner of the shop, volume low. Drew Barrymore starts screaming at the alien in the closet and Robin keeps waiting for Will to say something.

“What about you?” Robin asks, and Will’s head snaps up. “How’s your general existence on this fine day?”

“Oh—Yeah. Yeah, good. Thanks.”

“Cool.”

“Cool.”

Behind her, Robin can hear the alien screaming back at Drew Barrymore.

Robin always wondered which of them is genuinely more terrified in that moment.

Probably the alien.

Hiding, in unfamiliar territory, trying to blend in, surrounded by nobody else at all like him, nobody to relate to or speak with, but sure, it’s an obvious fucking link to her overall life on this planet as Robin Freaking Buckley, so, not much of a stretch for her to side with the wrinkly little brown dude.

Definitely the alien.

Sorry Drew.

“Love this movie,” says Will, looking over her shoulder.

“Totally,” says Robin, turning to look at the screen. “Steve hates it.”

“Hates it?”

“He always cries at the end so I put it on to torture him.”

“Oh. Yeah. Lame.”

“Lame?”

“It’s just a dumb kids’ movie.”

“Excuse me, is your heart made of stone? This movie’s a total certifiable tear-jerker. I defy anyone not to at least weep very quietly into their empty bowl of popcorn while the credits roll. It’s not lame that it makes Steve cry, but Steve thinks it’s lame that it makes Steve cry, which is where the torture comes in.”

Robin doesn’t turn back around, but she can feel Will looking at the screen, listening to her. She gets the feeling her looking somewhere other than him is helping him come out of his shell, so she lets the silence sit and they watch the film a minute. She learned this one from Nancy. He’ll talk when he’s ready. She wants to interrogate the shit out of him for a hundred reasons, but, he’ll… he’ll talk when he’s ready.

Just wait, Buckley.

Waiting’s fine.

Totally chill.

She’s super great at waiting for stuff.

World-champion waiter right here.

Yep.

Yeppers.

“Max says you know a lot about movies.”

Oh thank fuck.

Robin takes a breath. Shrugs a shoulder.

Be cool be cool be cool…

“Max would be correct.”

“Even the like, weird ones. Ones nobody else watches.”

“Other people totally watch them, they’re just like, not all Hollywood, so mainstream media doesn’t give a shit.”

“Right.”

“Some of the best movies I’ve ever seen you’ll probably never hear about.”

“Oh. Yeah, that sucks.”

“Yes, little Byers. It does totally suck.”

The movie plays on. She thinks she can hear him fiddling with his backpack straps.

“How did you hear about them?”

“Hm?”

“The movies. The—The not-Hollywood ones. How’d you find them if there’s no articles and stuff?”

Robin opens her mouth to spit out a laundry list of all the alt-queer-underground zines and flyers she’s spent years sniffing out and saving and subscribing to, and stops herself.

Probably Will does not actually want to hear about those.

“They’re out there,” she says instead. “You just gotta know where to look.”

“Right, totally.” Will nods, emphatically. “Yeah. Cool.”

And he goes quiet.

Robin glances at him and the slight crease between his eyebrows—confusion? Disappointment?—gives her the feeling her answer hasn’t helped.

That she, specifically, is not helping.

She watches him watch the TV and thinks of Max discovering Alien and all her own feelings about E.T. and Steve’s brain melting somewhere in the middle of 2001 and man do they need fewer movies about space exploration and beings from other planets.

She thinks of herself, too, watching them and a million other movies and if she’s honest—too honest—the fun, the story, the explosions… it’s like, a third of the allure.

Sometimes when she trawls through her options for a new movie to put on it’s less like searching for entertainment and more like searching for herself.

It’s a big-brain thought.

One Nancy, duh, had to have for her, as the credits rolled on their third viewing of Desert Hearts together. Robin’s twenty-ninth viewing, grand total.

Robin remembers it vividly.

They were at her house, and her mom was working late so they’d laid down on the couch together with Nancy kind of on Robin and Robin kind of trying not to fall off.

“It’s so good,” Nancy started, her head resting on Robin’s chest, like she was about to make an observation about the weather, “to watch a movie and see something you recognise in it.”

Robin had stared at the ceiling.

Nancy had continued the thought, curled up on her, warm and heavy and half-asleep.

“Nice knowing there’s other people out there like us, y’know?”

Robin had wrapped her arms around Nancy, rubbed her back and thought, Fuck.

Twenty-nine times she’d watched that freaking movie and she’d never clicked on the reason it spoke to her in the way it did.

But we rarely know what we’re looking for until other people point it out to us.

Maybe that’s what Will’s doing.

Searching.

Needing a pointer.

Or, Jeez, maybe he’s just after an alternative to watching Labyrinth for the thousandth time.

“I can make you a list,” Robin says then, because fuck it, whatever. Worst case, she’s indoctrinating a fellow film nerd and she’ll have someone else to talk movies with. “Few things you might wanna read or check out. If you want.”

Will perks up at that. Grips his backpack straps and does some more emphatic nodding.

“Okay,” he says, and his voice cracks and he clears his throat. “That’d be—Like if you don’t mind, or whatever.”

“Sure. Always happy to add another convert to the church of film fandom.”

“Okay,” he says again.

“Okay,” says Robin.

She wonders if it ought to go on her stupid list of evidence that she’s a huge dork and Will Byers is also a huge dork. Like it’s a prerequisite for gayness.

Probably not.

////

“How did you know?”

Nancy’s at her dresser again, picking a necklace.

Robin’s in her bed again, asking questions.

So it goes, apparently.

“Know what?”

Ah. Good. All meat, no sandwich, yet again, Robin.

“I mean that you—y’know. Liked girls.”

“Huh. I dunno.” And Nancy smirks at her reflection. “I mean. When I met a charming, babbling, beautiful dork who worked at an ice cream shop at the mall-”

“Cute, but I’m being serious.”

“So am I.”

“As much as I’d love to think I was your big queer awakening, I already know I wasn’t.”

Nancy stands, grinning a little grin to herself. “If you know, why’re you asking me?”

“I dunno.” Robin picks at a thread in the blanket covering her. What time is it? She should probably get up, get back to her own bedroom. Her mom will start wondering where she is. Ha! Jokes.

“I guess I didn’t really have one moment,” Nancy says, in front of her wardrobe now, sifting through cardigans and coats. Robin rolls onto her side to watch her. “It just kind of… snuck up on me.”

“Did it bother you?”

“Bother me how?”

“Like. That you were… different.”

“Sort of.”

“Liar.”

“Stop asking me questions you think you already know the answer to.”

“You were so preoccupied with what everybody thought of you. You did everything everybody else did.”

She spins around, oversized outrage on her face. “I did not.”

“Aw. Babe. You absolutely did.”

“I was just… Alright, whatever, I was… I was a normal teenager, thank you.” She goes back to her wardrobe, unphased. “I wanted to fit in and be liked and have friends. And for a little while, the whole being-into-girls thing…”

Robin sighs. “Didn’t fit into that.”

“No. Or at least, I didn’t think it did.”

Well. She knows that feeling.

She just chose to be a weirdo freak band geek rather than bend herself to fit everybody else’s mold. A point of pride, most days. When it isn’t kinda freaking lonely.

“What changed?” Robin swallows around the weird lump in her throat. “To make you stop caring?”

“I don’t think I stopped caring. I just started caring about the things that actually mattered.”

Robin wants to counter that with something like do you seriously think alienating yourself from everyone and everything you’ve ever known doesn’t actually matter but finds she has no voice to do it with.

Nancy turns to her, sweater in hand. She’s looking at Robin. Studying her.

Uh oh. Robin’s done it. Pushed too far.

She’s got her mouth open to dial it back—thank you for playing twenty questions, I’ve been your host—when Nancy surprises her by climbing onto the bed to lay down next to her.

Nancy hates getting back into bed once she’s already gotten up. Ruins her whole flow, she says.

“What?” Robin says, feeling ten times the weight of Nancy’s thoughtful scrutiny.

“What’s going on?”

“What do you mean?”

“Something’s on your mind. You know I can tell when something’s on your mind.”

Robin does know. She used to chalk it up to Nancy being uniquely in tune with Robin’s particular radio station, but has to admit she’s likely broadcasting that sucker a lot more loudly than she intends to. Probably Nancy’s dog knows.

“It’s nothing,” she says, cracking under the pressure already—she rolls onto her back again, away from the intimacy of her gaze. “We’ve just never really talked about it.”

Nancy’s quiet a moment. Robin’s glad she doesn’t try to touch her.

For some insane reason, she might like, burst into tears? At any second?

“What was your moment?” Nancy asks, soft. “When you realised?”

Robin scoffs, and lets them both pretend they can’t hear how wet the sound is.

Christ, were they not supposed to be talking about Will?

“Now who’s asking questions they already know the answer to?”

“Tammy.”

“I was always half aware of it. Just… part of me. Tammy just… gave it a direction.”

“Cannot imagine why.”

“Hey,” Robin says, but enjoys the little thrill she always gets when Nancy’s jealous streak makes itself known. Kinda nice, to be so valued—so protected.

“She doesn’t deserve you,” Nancy adds. “And she wouldn’t know what to do with you.”

Now Robin’s face starts to warm. Her mouth twists, part shyness, part delight.

“And you do, do you?”

Nancy’s response is to sit up and clamber on top of her—straddle her, pin her with her gaze and her body. Her eyes are glinting, that confident smirk in place she knows makes butterflies erupt in Robin’s chest cavity.

She leans down until their lips brush, hair a soft, floral-scented curtain around them, and whispers, “You gonna tell me I don’t?”

Robin smiles, hands drawn to Nancy’s waist like magnets. She squeezes, holds. Feels Nancy push her hips down against Robin’s in response.

“No, ma’am.”

“I thought not.”

And then Robin’s being kissed, a claiming, slow and open-mouthed. It makes Robin hot all over, and when Nancy pulls back it leaves her a little stupid, dazed, forgetful.

“Buck,” says Nancy, easing her out of it. Robin blinks her eyes open, unsure when the hell she closed them. Her lips are tingling. Nancy strokes a fingertip down her cheek, concern threading into the embers in her eyes. “What’s really going on?”

Freaking rude of her, to ask her like that, like this.

If she didn’t already feel partly cleaved open, having Nancy’s hands splayed lightly on her stomach and her weight in her lap and her full, entire attention on her face would sure have gotten her there.

Robin wants to claw her own eyes out.

She wants give in and cry and make Nancy late for work and talk and be held and it won’t achieve anything except she will have talked and been hugged and one or both of those things couldn’t hurt right now.

It’s like her brain is on fire, and any time she grabs a thought it goes up in smoke.

Fucking moron.

Why are you like this?

Why can’t you just focus and say what you’re trying to say?

She’s being a dumbass.

Nancy’s supposed to be out of here by now and so’s Robin, and they both have to finish getting dressed before Nancy’s mom comes in to say something about breakfast and the little mattress on the floor has very obviously not been slept in and the whole of Nancy’s bed very obviously has and then someone calls Robin’s mom and she has to leave the country and go live in like, Russia, and die an early death from exposure or starvation or both. She knows Russia has heating and also food but she decides she won’t have access to either in her self-imposed exile.

She needs to shut up.

She needs to shut up, and stop being a dumbass.

“Nothing,” says Robin, extracting herself from Nancy’s gaze and hands and comfort. “It doesn’t matter. It’s fine.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yeah,” Robin croaks, and hopes they can both chalk that up to her dopey arousal and not the crap-ton of feelings she’s trying not to wade through right now. “Just thinking. About stuff. Too much stuff. Stupid stuff. Really. Top-tier stupid. Totally and completely unimportant.”

Nancy doesn’t push, even if her eyes stay where they are a beat longer than they might if she one-hundred-percent bought the bullshit Robin’s clearly shovelling out.

Guilt gnaws at her. She swallows it down.

“Okay,” Nancy says, careful. “If you say so.”

////

She’s an idiot.

That’s what it is. The real problem.

She’s a certifiable goddamn moron.

They’re at the roller rink for Holly’s birthday—Robin’s lucky the gang are tight enough that her presence at Baby Wheeler’s birthday doesn’t raise any eyebrows, whether she does or does not sit right next to Nancy for eighty percent of the afternoon—and she’s half-listening to Mrs Wheeler say something to Jonathan, who’s here for some reason, and it reminds her of a movie she was going to recommend to Will and she turns to tell him and catches him…

Staring.

Only it’s not staring. Robin can’t pretend anymore that it could be.

He’s looking at Mike, who’s grinning widely watching El do absolutely nothing besides shove another hotdog in her mouth, and Robin goes back and forth between Will’s face and Mike’s and she realises—god damn it—it’s not so much a picture as it is a mirror.

I wanted her to look at me that way.

Yeah.

Shit.

////

It gets worse after that.

Information begets information, after all.

A stone rolling down a hill or whatever, collecting moss until it’s boulder-sized. Wrecking-ball-sized.

Now every time Robin sees Will, she can’t stop seeing him.

Outside the school, the few times she accidentally runs into him at the Wheelers’ when she’s there for Nancy and he’s there for whatever it is the nerds do in the Wheelers’ basement, the video store—so often, the video store.

And the ache comes back.

And it won’t go away.

////

“I’m worried about Will.”

Nancy pauses with her lipstick pressed to her lower lip.

Robin thinks about pulling the covers above her head and screaming.

“Like, Will Will?”

“No,” Robin sighs, petulant, and pointlessly so. “The other Will.”

Nancy throws a look over her shoulder, unamused and patient about it.

“What are you worried about?”

“I dunno.” She rolls onto her side, curls in on herself. “He’s just like… Weird. Anxious, or something.”

“He’s sort of just like that. Odd, I guess.”

“He’s sweet.”

“Hence, odd, because y’know—teenage boy.”

Robin mulls on that.

Maybe that’s all it is. He’s Not Like Other Boys. The end.

“He’s in high school,” Nancy goes on. “High school’s pretty anxiety-inducing.”

“Like you remember high school at this point.”

“We graduated last year, and my memory is not as bad as yours.”

“Excuse you, my memory is a steel trap.”

“A selective steel trap, which only traps trivial things, or very complex skills you’re not likely to need in real life.”

“Is that a dig at me being in band?”

“No,” Nancy smirks, teasing, “it’s a dig at you being good at band.”

Robin groans into her pillow. Nancy’s pillow. Her pillow? She usually sleeps on this side, so. It can be hers.

“All those languages you know how to speak, and you’re choosing to make unintelligible noises at me.”

“I just—I think it’s more than that. With Will. It’s not just garden-variety teenage angst. I think.”

Nancy comes to sit on Robin’s side of the bed, making the mattress dip and Robin tip toward her a little. Her girlfriend leans over her, hand planted into the comforter scrunched around her other side. Tilts to catch her eye.

“So. What do you think it is, then?”

It’s not challenging. She’s listening. Taking her seriously.

Nancy always takes her seriously.

Robin pulls an arm out from under the covers so she can rest her hand on the arm bracketing her. Plays with the pushed-up sleeve of today’s cute cardigan. Blue with white stripes.

“It’s stupid,” she hedges. “I’m not even sure I…”

The tiniest frown creases Nancy’s actual-porcelain-doll skin.

Robin feels her gaze take her in, feels her waiting, and wonders how likely it is some telepathic link might open up between them and spare her the trouble of spitting it out.

I think he might be gay.

I think he might have feelings for your brother.

I think he needs someone to tell him he’s okay.

That even when it doesn’t feel like it, he’s going to be okay.

Nancy won’t care. Or, she will, but in the right way.

It’s just, there’s like, rules, to this sort of thing. Robin knows there is. Can’t imagine how it would have felt if the world turned upside down and roles were reversed and someone like Will told someone like Steve he thought she was gay, before she’d managed to get there herself.

It’s just…

She can’t stop thinking about herself.

Her 15-year-old self.

And what it would have meant if someone who understood even an iota of what she was going through had sat her down and said There is nothing wrong with you.

“Hey,” Nancy says, resting her hand on Robin’s. “Maybe it’ll help if you talk it through?”

Another thing Nancy’s good at: letting Robin talk.

Robin’s rambled and ranted and cried in Nancy’s vicinity more times than she would ever want to count, because it’s a lot, and also: embarrassing. She knows now that Nancy would listen without judgment, and help without even saying anything. It’d be great. So great.

If only saying the thing was half as easy as thinking it.

(Like thinking it is a piece of cake.)

Too bad Robin learned a long time ago that few thoughts are harder to turn into words than the ones with the power to change how another person feels about you.

She smooths out Nancy’s sleeve where she’s crinkled it and gives her a smile that hopefully lands somewhere near reassuring and totally avoids manic-and-lying.

“It’s fine. Better than fine. It’s—I’m being a dumbass. Again.” Robin gives her a gentle shove in the general direction of the rest of her morning routine. She’s gonna be late for work again. Because of Robin. Again. “Ignore me.”

“Buck,” Nancy says, wearing Robin down several notches in an instant by using that name, that silly nickname, that favourite one of Robin’s. Robin pulls herself from the bed so she can get away from it. “Something’s bothering you. Something’s been bothering you a while now.”

“I’m fine. Really.”

“Really.”

“Really really, Nance. A-okay.”

“You can talk to me.”

“Totally. For sure. I know that.”

“Do you?”

Robin’s up now, pacing, or trying to remember where she put her duffel bag so she can find her clothes, or maybe her toothbrush—teeth, yeah, she needs to brush her teeth.

“Why do you keep repeating the previous question as a follow-up question?”

“Because you’re not listening to me.”

That stops her. For a second.

Why don’t you ever listen, Robin?

What’s wrong with you?

Could you be any more useless?

Robin shakes off the voice, her mother’s voice, and the feeling of being two inches tall at best.

It’s not true, Nancy would say. She shouldn’t talk to you like that.

She’s not sure she believes it, but hearing it repeated in her head in Nancy’s voice always helps, so she does that a couple times in her patch of quiet and toothbrush-hunting.

Shit, wait.

Nancy.

Nancy’s saying something else.

Said. Said something else.

Robin looks at her—in the moment Nancy gets up off the bed.

“Wait-”

“Forget it.”

Shit.

“I just—I am listening, I was just-”

“It doesn’t matter. You said you’re fine, so, you’re fine.”

“Nance-”

“It’s fine,” Nancy says, in that way-too-casual high-pitched tone of hers, with her little shrug and her faintly-challenging gaze and then she freaking—she goes and says it again, even worse, like a challenge: “It’s fine.” Then: “I have to get to work.”

And she slips her shoes on, grabs her handbag, and pauses in the doorway.

“Put some pants on,” she says. “Can’t have my Mom realising we’re in love.”

That one stings.

She’s gone before Robin can even absorb the words. A few seconds later the front door slams, loud.

Robin flops face-first onto the bed. Doesn’t even care Nancy left her door open.

At least if Mrs Wheeler catches her half-naked in her daughter’s totally-not-recently-had-sex-in bed, her death would be quick.

////

“I’m worried about Will.”

She’s just dumped sugar number three into her coffee when Steve comes into the staff room. Hovers in the doorway with his arms folded, and says… that.

Robin pauses, contemplating sugar number four. Or maybe breaking her mug over his head.

“You like, know Will, right?” Steve asks.

“You mean Will Will? Our mutual friend Will? Who we definitely both know? And have had literal actual conversations with multiple times? Together?”

“Shut up, I mean like, how well do you know him?”

Screw it, four sugars.

“A little. Nice. Total boy scout.”

“Yeah,” Steve nods, arms still folded, eyes still elsewhere. “Yeah. Boy scout.”

God, he’s gonna make her go for five.

“Steve. What?”

“What what?”

“What—is the problem? I haven’t seen you think so hard since we watched Space Odyssey.”

“You said so yourself, you said, Stanley Kubrick is a very obtuse filmmaker, alright?”

“Spit it the fuck out. I’m too tired.”

“I think he’s doing drugs.”

Definitely five.

“Hey,” says Steve, watching her stir it all together. “Did you hear what I said?”

“I did, but I read somewhere you’re not supposed to indulge a crazy person’s delusions, so.” She sips her coffee. Way too sweet. “I also read you’re not supposed to tell a crazy person they’re crazy, but, whoops.”

“He’s acting all weird. You can’t tell me you don’t think he’s acting all weird.”

“I don’t super pay attention to all the little dweebs in the squad like you do.”

“You pay attention to everything, it’s why you can’t focus on anything.”

Robin’s ready to argue with that, and then realises she can’t argue with that.

“I focus on work.”

“Work is movies. You love movies.”

“Work is not movies. Work is making Keith do all the things he’s supposed to do, and doing everything else he won’t do, and sometimes drinking coffee and arguing with you in the break room.”

“You’re not arguing,” Steve says, like he’s figuring it out as he says it. “You’re avoiding.”

She should get shirts made.

Will Is Fine.

Apparently there’s a market for it.

“He’s not on drugs.”

“How do you know?”

“I just—He’s not.”

“Ok, so what, then?”

“It’s nothing.”

“It is—You know it is, I can see it all over your face. You’re not slick, Robin. You’re not slick and I’m like, a lot more observant than people think I am.”

Another point Robin is furiously unable to disagree with.

“It’s not really anything we can talk about.”

“Why not?”

“It’s personal. Private.”

“Private like a secret? I can keep a secret.”

Robin has to give him that—Steve’s proven that much. Over a year now he’s known about Robin’s whole deal—Tammy, girls, yada yada—and still nobody’s shown up at the video store to drag her into the street by her ear and make a scene about it.

“Private like not anybody’s business but Will’s,” she says.

“Right. Then. How do you know about it?”

Just lucky, I guess.

She shakes the thought away. Knows it’s presumptuous, unfounded, guesswork.

“I don’t,” she says, the honest truth. “So stop asking me about it.”

She goes towards the break room door and Steve blocks her path, hands out, face creasing.

“Just—come on, what if it is drugs? Reefer ruins lives, Robin.”

“It’s not drugs. And Jesus, get a clue, weed isn’t evil.”

“I’m trying to look out for him. You know? It’s like—It’s like we’re the adults, and they’re—not adults.”

“We are extremely not the adults.”

She goes to move past him again, and Steve blocks her again.

“Robin!”

“Steve!”

“Don’t do the thing where we pretend I’m stupid for seeing what’s right in front of me, ok? I’m not stupid.”

And with that, he’s three for three.

Robin takes a slow, small breath, and blows it back out.

“Dude,” she starts. “I get it. But he already has a big brother, remember.”

Steve’s eyes damn near bug right out of his head. “Who’s addicted to weed.”

“Oh my fucking-”

“Come on!”

“What? What? Do you think we’re going to like, stage an intervention? Do you think we’re going to go to the Byers’ house all we’re here because we care about you and Joyce is gonna serve biscuits and Jonathan will toss his bong collection in the trash in solidarity and we’ll all just fix Will together?”

“I don’t want to fix him, I want to help him.”

And well.

She’s not entirely sure if it’s what he’s saying, or the way he’s saying it, or the fact she hasn’t spoken to Nancy in almost six days or the fact that Nancy hasn’t spoken to her in almost six days, or if she definitely, definitely, did not need that fifth sugar, but when this big, stupid guy dares to loudly care about their maybe-gay, definitely-scared friend right in front of her face and Robin’s cut off mid-rant by the sheer sincerity of it, she has to put her mug down for fear she might start shaking so hard she’ll drop it.

“It’s just—It’s been like, weeks, y’know?” Steve says, quieter. “I thought something was like, off, with him, and I keep thinking he’ll snap out of it or whatever and then I see him and the poor guy’s like, a kicked puppy, half the time. I don’t get it.” He comes to lean against the counter with his arms folded up like he does when he’s somewhere between frustrated and fearful. “I know he’s got… Jonathan. And the dorks. I just… want him to know he’s got other people, too.”

Robin nods at the tiles behind the sink. Her shaking hasn’t stopped.

“Robin?”

She keeps nodding. Swallows. The swallowing doesn’t work. She tries it again.

Steve straightens, a blurry, concerned shape. Robin blinks, like that’ll help him come into focus. Blinks and blinks.

“Hey… What…”

Robin steps forward with her head down and her mouth scrunched and her eyes leaking and finds him warm and bony and solid, and she presses her stupid face into his stupid chest and grips his shirt and lets out the sob that’s been rattling around in there for somewhere between five minutes and five years.

“Whoa,” says Steve, with no idea what the hell is going on. “Whoa. Okay. Uh. Okay, it’s—it’s okay.”

His hands rest on her back, light, like he’s not sure it’s what he’s supposed to do. Until Robin grips his shirt tighter, turns her head to rest her cheek on his shoulder and sniffs loudly and loses hold on another quiet sob, and the pressure around her increases, his arms encircling, holding.

“Okay,” he says again, more sure, more gentle. One of his hands rubs up and down her back. She sobs again, with her eyes squeezed shut and her body squeezed in his arms, and he rocks them, side to side, almost unnoticeable. “It’s okay.”

Robin will never admit it to anyone for as long as she lives, but there are times when she understands why so many girls wanna kiss Steve Harrington.

////

“You wanna talk about it?”

“Not really.”

“Ok. Do you need to talk about it?”

“I’m with Dustin. You were way more tolerable when you were a mindless asshat.”

Steve smirks at the road, face half-cast in shadow by the night and the odd streetlight. He flicks his turn signal on and eases them off the main drag.

“I know,” he says, good-humoured about it.

Hawkins is half-asleep, yellow and orange lights filtering through curtains and windows, sprinklers abandoned on lawns, not many cars out. Robin’s rolled her window down. The air’s still, and cool on her skin. Her eyes are sore, and her face. She’s not entirely cried out, but she’s close. Could probably go another round if Steve pushes this whole talking about it thing.

She’d blamed her random ugly-cry on hormones and finished her shift and her disgusting coffee and it seems that now Steve’s performing his usual function of driving her home he’s decided she’s captive audience enough to do one of his check-ins.

When did he become this person?

“You don’t have to tell me,” he says. “But like. You can.”

Robin can’t decide if she wants to hug him again, or hit him.

Whether it’s an after effect of the crying, or the evening, or the caring, when she opens her mouth to brush him off or divert his attention or make something up, what comes out is, “Nancy and I are together.”

Silence.

Then Steve laughs. A loud, quick burst, with his elbow resting lazily on the open window sill and the steering wheel barely caught between two fingers.

“Alright,” he chuckles. “Cool.”

Robin takes a breath. She feels strangely, completely calm.

Could be dissociation. Could be indifference.

She’s fucking in love. And she’s fucking tired of feeling like that’s a problem.

“We are,” she says. “We have been. For about eight months.”

Steve rolls his eyes.

“I’m at her house like, more than my own, at this point. No idea what her mom thinks. Or Mike.”

“Robin.”

“I sneak in and out, sometimes.”

“Robin,” Steve says again, and he sounds faintly annoyed this time, and that—okay, that is a little terrifying. That’s the version of this conversation she’s feared, off and on, for, well, for about eight months. Steve being hurt. Steve being pissed off. Steve never wanting to talk to her ever again. And then who’d let her cry into his shirt and drive her home afterwards and not make her feel like a dickhead about it?

Robin should’ve guessed that if she eventually had to have this conversation with Steve, one possible version of events would be convincing him I am not full of shit.

She wracks her brain for how to do it.

Importantly, how to do it in a way that Nancy won’t bludgeon her for later. Probably not… every detail of their relationship thus far is up for grabs.

“She has a mole.”

Steve glances at her. Then back to the road.

“What?”

“Nancy. She has a mole.”

Steve frowns at the road. “Everybody has moles.”

Robin swallows. Does not relish the implications of this conversation.

“Yeah. But. Nancy has a particular mole. In a particular place.”

Steve scoffs. “Sure,” he says. “Where, then?”

Robin doesn’t answer. Surely she doesn’t have to.

She watches him drive and waits for him to get it.

“Robin.”

“Steve.”

His grip on the wheel tightens. Robin might not have noticed it except for the fact she’s scrutinising every single tiny movement Steve makes right now.

“Where is it, then?”

His voice is nearly as tight as his grip.

“Robin?”

He glances at her when she doesn’t answer.

“Where’s—Where’s the mole, Robin?”

He’s sounding almost frantic, now.

“Steve.”

“Robin, where’s the mole?”

He’s looking at her, and not at the road.

“Steve.”

“Robin-”

“Steve!”

“Shit!”

The car screams to a stop at a red light, just in time for a truck to meander across the intersection. Robin’s knee bashes hard against the dash.

Steve rocks back into his seat and gapes out the windscreen.

Everything falls very, very quiet.

“You and…”

Robin nods, but Steve’s not looking at her anymore.

“You… and…”

“Nancy,” she finishes for him.

She’s trying not to be offended. Is it that hard to believe?

No, you know what, forget that. It is pretty freaking unbelievable.

Robin revels in the hugeness of a big, beautiful truth and makes a valiant attempt at ignoring the anxiety spike rattling through her system.

Steve’s giving her nothing. She’s not sure what to prepare for, as far as reactions go.

But he’s not yelling at her.

Yet.

Could be worse, right?

“Eight months,” he whispers, gears turning in his head. “That’s like…”

“Christmas. Just before.”

Steve looks at her.

If she had to pick only one word, Robin would go with bewildered. That word was invented to specifically describe when a person’s face does exactly what Steve’s face is doing in this precise moment.

A new possibility occurs to her: Steve has a stroke. Can people their age have strokes?

Robin drums her fingers on her seat, desperate for the tension to break in literally any meaningful way.

Let him think. Let him process.

“Christmas,” he chokes.

Robin grimaces. Steve loves Christmas. Here’s hoping she’s not utterly ruining the entire festive season for him forevermore.

She raises her eyebrow, cautious.

“Ho ho ho?”

Steve stares at her.

Frozen.

And breaks.

Bursts into laughter so loud that for a split second Robin thinks the stroke thing might be the way this is all going and tries to figure out how far away they are from the hospital.

“Holy shit.”

Robin watches him.

Red in the face, full-body jag-laughter so violent it goes quiet.

“You-” He stops, wheezing. Tries again. “I can’t-”

This is… okay, right?

This is…

Robin has no idea what this is.

“Oh my god,” he says, stopping, staring out the window. A new thought’s hit him. Robin can tell that much. “Holy shit. Do you know what this means?”

“… What?”

“It means we’re… We’re like…”

“Oh, god-”

“No, seriously-”

“Don’t say it. Whatever’s about to come out of your mouth, do not-”

“Beaver bros.”

Robin gets out of the car.

“Robin!”

“Nope. No. That’s not-”

“Robin, I’m-” And he pauses, because the asshole’s still trying to pull himself out of his giggle fit. “I’m—I’m sorry, I couldn’t not-”

“You absolutely could not!”

“You have to admit it’s pretty crazy we both know what Nancy-”

“Watch it. That’s my girlfriend.”

Steve sobers at that, like the information’s hitting him in waves. He rests his elbow on the roof of the car and his forehead on his hand and stares at her some more.

“Your girlfriend.”

Robin stays where she is, in the middle of the road with her backpack strap in one hand and the end of her sleeve clutched in the other.

She meets his eye. Takes another breath. Nods.

Steve’s eyebrows disappear into his hairline. His eyes glaze, unfocused on the roof of his car.

“Whoa,” he breathes.

It’s in this moment that Robin realises she’s not actually ever said those words to anyone before ever.

And she just did.

And a sinkhole did not suddenly appear underneath her and eat her, Steve and Steve’s car all in one go.

She can hear crickets, and the breeze, and another car on another road somewhere nearby, and Steve’s sneakers scuffing on the loose bitumen when he straightens, thinking, absorbing.

She can hear everything.

She can feel everything.

She can, she realises, breathe. So she does. Deeply. The air cools her lungs, her nerves. She takes another gulp of it.

Funny, how we don’t realise we’re suffocating until we’re not anymore.

“Hey,” says Steve. “This is like… cool.”

“Cool?”

“Fine.”

“Fine.”

“Did you… Did you really think this’d bug me?”

Robin scoffs, blinking furiously. Her chest is tight. Feels stupid, that she can breathe so well for the first time in a long time and her knee-jerk reaction is to forget how. Her eyes are threatening to leak again.

“No,” she chokes.

“Robin…”

“I don’t know. Shut up.”

He does, to his credit. Waits her out, like she’s going to pull herself together after a lowkey life-changing admission in the middle of the street and they can go get milkshakes on their way back to her house as if nothing happened.

“Do you want to hug again?” he tries.

“No. You stay over there.”

He raises his hands, head bowed in deference. “Staying. Staying.”

Robin sniffs, and for all the niceness of breathing and being she’s enjoying, fatigue is starting to set in, the longer she stays still, like it’s been waiting for her. Feelings fatigue.

“Can we just… Let’s just… not stay in the middle of the fucking road, okay?”

Steve smiles. “Sure.” He pats the car roof. “C’mon.”

Robin hesitates.

Maybe she should walk.

Yeah.

She can walk home with her bag and her feelings and hope her mom’s already asleep in her armchair with the television on and make it upstairs and lock herself in her bedroom and never, ever go outside again.

She gets in the car.

Steve turns the radio on, because he’s a better friend than Robin gives him credit for.

She hugs her backpack and stares out her window and hopes that in the morning they both experience some kind of shared amnesia.

“You know,” says Steve, because he’s actually a shitty, shitty, shitty friend, “me and Nancy…”

“Steve-”

“Just shut the fuck up for a second, trust me.”

Robin sighs. She does not trust him, but she does decide to shut the fuck up.

“Me and Nancy, that was like, a lifetime ago. We were different people then, right? I mean. I know I was.”

“You definitely were.”

He narrows his eyes at her, but lets her have the shot.

“It’s like, water under the bridge, or whatever. An ocean of the stuff. She’s cool. She’s my friend. And you’re my friend.”

“Debatable.”

“If being with Nancy makes you happy, then… I’m good with it.”

Robin wants to say something snarky to that. Something snappy. Zing him with her wit.

I don’t need your approval.

Good to know.

What a relief, I was so worried.

“Nobody else knows,” she says.

“Yeah. I won’t say anything.”

She sniffs, and she says quietly, to the window, “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” he says, and he sounds kinda pleased with himself, which makes her smile, and then she catches her watery smiley reflection in the glass. “Thanks for like, telling me. I’m glad you did.”

Robin looks at him. He looks unbothered. Baseline-happy. Maybe a little concerned, about her, she figures. He looks like Steve. Everything’s changed, and nothing has.

////

Nancy appears after too many ignored phone calls for her to reasonably be expected to stay away.

Robin’s not super invested in what’s reasonable right now and takes personal affront to her girlfriend appearing on her doorstep on a Tuesday afternoon. Isn’t she supposed to be at work?

The doorbell goes, and Robin ignores it.

She’s getting pretty good at this ignoring stuff.

“Robin! That friend’s here!”

Her mom doesn’t like anybody Robin likes, but she’s particularly uninspired by Nancy’s presence in their lives.

“I’m not home!”

“She’s coming up!”

“Don’t let her come up!”

“She heard you!”

“Mom!”

“Figure it out, Robin!”

Robin swallows a scream and leaps off her bed.

Figure it out, Robin.

Her mom says that a lot.

Figure what out? she wants to say. Why you actively kind of hate me?

Maybe another day.

For now Nancy’s making her way up the stairs and Robin’s still in her pajamas and there’s magazines and clothes everywhere. Jesus, she hasn’t even opened her window yet. It smells like B.O. and hairspray in here.

She’s flying through a tidying session when there’s a quiet knock on her door.

Robin opens it to find Nancy right there, in her leggings and sneakers and oversized sweater and ponytail. She looks cozy and soft. Robin hasn’t seen her in like, eleven days. She wants to hug the crap out of her.

“Uh,” Robin says. “Hey.”

Nancy gives her a small little smile. “Hi.”

“Do you…” Robin gestures at her bed with what’s in her hand. A Rolling Stone magazine with Jack Nicholson on the cover. She chucks it on her desk and brushes her hands down her pajama top, like that helps. She should’ve prioritised getting dressed. “Sorry,” she says, the invitation to sit turning to ash in her mouth.

Nancy arches an eyebrow. “For what?”

“Uh…” Robin laughs at herself, humourless. “For being a mess. Being a moron. For being me. Take your pick.”

Nancy lets herself into her room, pushing the door shut quietly behind her.

“Buck,” she says, with some privacy between them now. “You don’t have to apologise for being you.”

Robin stews in her pointless self-deprecation.

Nancy guides her to the end of her bed.

They sit, and then Robin flops back to lie down, and Nancy joins her in staring at the ceiling. There’s a ton of old glow-in-the-dark stars stuck up there. None of them work anymore. It’s quiet, save for the drone of the television her mother’s forever glued to and the guy next door mowing his lawn.

“We never sleep at your house,” Nancy says, tone light.

Robin snorts. “Do you want to?”

She feels Nancy shrug, one-shouldered. “Sure.”

“Yeah, right.”

“Why’s that so hard to believe?”

“For one thing, my mom.”

“I can handle your mom.”

“You say that now. Hell hath no fury.”

“I’ve literally never seen her anywhere but that chair or the kitchen. Does she even come upstairs?”

“She hates all of my friends.”

“That makes it hard for you, not me.”

“Your bed’s more comfortable than mine.”

“I like your bed. It smells like you. It’s all soft.”

“If you were here, overnight, I would never, ever be able to go to sleep.”

“Challenge accepted.”

Robin huffs a laugh through her nose. Can’t help but smile, even if the topic of a Nancy Sleepover is making her break out in hives.

“Maybe you’re right,” Robin says, voice quiet. She swallows around a stupid, stupid lump forming in her throat. “She barely even looks at me. Doesn’t give a shit about what I do unless I do something wrong.”

Nancy’s hand rests over hers. Their fingers slip together, muscle memory.

Robin swallows again. “Maybe you should stay tonight and we can have super loud sex and see if she notices.”

Nancy giggles. Nudges Robin’s side and settles closer to her, still smiling.

Robin never would’ve thought it’d be possible to hear when someone’s smiling, until she met Nancy.

“I’m sorry I’ve been all weird,” Robin mutters.

“You’re always weird.”

“Extra weird, then.”

“Hm.” Nancy squeezes her hand. “Thanks for saying that. I could’ve been more… patient, probably.”

“Probably?”

“Possibly.”

Robin’s turn to smile.

“I get it. I turn being patient into an Olympic-level sport. You’ve already got your fair share of gold medals.”

“It’s not a chore to be patient with you.”

“Nance, I suck at being patient with me. Woe for everyone else.”

Another nudge. “Stop it.”

Robin does. Externally, anyway. She’s not sure she’s ever gonna figure out how to shut up the inside-voices, but, one thing at a time.

Nancy believes in her. Maybe that’s enough.

“I think Will might be gay.”

The words fall out of her mouth and thud onto the floor.

She doesn’t say anything else.

Neither of them do.

Okay. Well. She hasn’t started laughing.

Or gotten up and left.

You shouldn’t have just announced it like that.

You sound like a total moron.

You are a total moron.

Robin turns her head to find Nancy looking at her.

She’s… listening. Always listening.

Robin returns her attention to the ceiling, and the feeling of Nancy’s fingers tangled in hers. The familiar frustration comes back. Frustration at herself, at this totally absurd situation, at none of this being any easier when Nancy is doing absolutely everything a person can do to make it easy. So did Steve, she realises. Literally the only person making this difficult is Robin.

Jesus, why has all this… stuff… with Will wound her up so much?

“Not that he’s-” Robin stops. Tries again. “Maybe there’s another word he—Nobody says he has to be… that. I shouldn’t-” She sighs. Rubs her face. Takes a breath. “Words matter. And I’m not gonna pick a word for him before he’s picked a word for himself. It’s not up to me. And it’d be really shitty of me to just like—assume something like that based on—on what? That he’s quiet and he’s sensitive and he dresses different. Like he’s not allowed to be those things without it meaning something.”

“It would be shitty.” Nancy’s thumb rubs an absent line over Robin’s knuckle. “But it’s not what you’re basing it on, is it?”

Robin thinks back to the barbecue. The video store.

Every other interaction she’s had with the guy.

It is enough? Is she—Is she being a total asshole about all this?

Tying herself in knots, for absolutely no reason.

Projecting.

Finding a thing she thinks she recognises, and trying to make sense of it by analysing it through her own specific way of looking at the world—the Robin Buckley Filter—and the Robin Buckley Filter is like, ninety-three percent queer on a bad day, so no matter what she does it’s going to—to warp things, isn’t it?

“Robin.”

Robin jerks back to reality. Finds Nancy propped on her elbow now, still holding her hand. Still being patient. Still listening.

She says, “I think you’re right.”

All the air rushes out of Robin’s lungs like she’s been lovingly sucker-punched right in the gut.

She stares at plastic stars that don’t glow anymore and tries to comprehend the impossibility that is the person you love believing you when you say something unbelievable.

“You do?”

Nancy leans down to kiss her, deliberately, and very, very gentle.

“Yes,” she says, quiet, with their eyes still closed and their noses pressed together. “I do.”

For the next four seconds, Robin lets herself bask in the afterglow of Nancy Wheeler kissing her into rightness.

“I mean,” Nancy adds, lying back down beside her, “I was kinda hoping he’d be bi, so I wouldn’t be the only one, and who knows—his decision, his label, like you said—but, I think he only plays for one particular team.”

Robin stares open-mouthed at her dim little galaxy so hard and for so long that Nancy giggles and rubs her arm.

“Sorry, baby,” she says. “Steve thinks so, too.”

“Steve?”

“We haven’t talked about it, but, he’s not subtle.”

“Steve thinks he’s on drugs.”

Nancy snorts an adorable laugh and slaps her hand over her mouth.

“He does not.”

“He totally does—He cornered me in the break room about it and everything.”

“You’re not serious.”

“Right?” Robin says, while Nancy tries not to snort-laugh again, and oh, what a relief it is to be on the same page as someone. Is she levitating? She feels so light suddenly, she may as well be levitating. “You’d have to be on drugs to think Will is on drugs.”

Nancy hums her agreement.

“There’s something else,” Robin says. “I told him. Steve. About us.”

“You did?”

“A couple days ago. I should’ve asked you first, or like, included you, in the-”

“It’s fine, it’s fine.” Nancy squeezes her hand again, reassuring. “It’s just… surprising. How did that…”

“He was asking me about Will, and I guess I… Had some stupid meltdown.” Robin suddenly finds she wants Nancy to be closer, in this moment, and decides, screw it—shifts onto her side so she can curl herself around Nancy’s body, cheek to shoulder. Nancy welcomes the shift, holds her to her. Robin feels her forehead being kissed, and lets her eyes drift closed.

“Meltdown,” Nancy repeats.

Robin breathes in, and out.

Reminds herself where she is. Who she’s with.

“I used to be terrified of this,” Robin says. “Of wanting this. Like, panic attacks, damn-near-wet-the-bed, twitching-like-a-coffee-addict scared. I had… I had no dad, and a brain full of bees, and my mom was… my mom, and I just wanted to be like everybody else in one way, just one stupid little way, just be normal. You didn’t have it, I know you didn’t, I’m so freaking glad you didn’t, but, there’s like, so many layers to that fear. Afraid to think about it. Afraid to talk about it. Afraid to talk about thinking about it. Afraid to hug someone too long or even like, touch them, in case they think you’re this huge disgusting creep-monster who deserves to get tarred and set on fire like those creatures in those-”

Nancy cuts in, soft and sure.

Knows that road, and knows there is rarely any point travelling down it.

“Hey.”

Robin stops. Regroups. Glad to be steered back on course by somebody with way more chill than she has.

“And then I got it. I got you—and it was like, oh, wait. This isn’t scary. This is incredible. I should’ve done this sooner.”

Nancy squeezes her tightly for a second. It helps.

“All this stuff with Will…” Robin frowns at Nancy’s jawline. She is not enjoying saying this part out loud. “I kept thinking how confused and lonely he must be. How much help he might need. I understand him—I am him. Still. I went from scared to like girls to scared of people finding out I like girls to scared of people finding out I have a girlfriend. Whatever I do, I’m just—chickenshit, Nance. A big fucking chicken.”

“You’re not giving yourself enough credit. And you’re not chickenshit, you’re human.”

“It sucks.”

“Other people make it suck. All you’re doing is existing. You’re allowed to do that, you know.”

“Not sure I’m ready for logic to enter the conversation, thanks.”

Nancy rubs her arm.

“I’m sorry you couldn’t talk to me about it,” she murmurs.

“Yeah. Me, too.”

“Any particular reason for that?”

“Oh, y’know. Worried you’d finally crack and ditch me when you realise I might never get my shit together and we can’t figure out how to have a real relationship. Et cetera.”

“Never.”

“Small wonders.”

They lie in silence a moment. Robin can hear them both breathing. It’s calming.

“You know what’s funny?” Nancy asks.

“That… this means I have the emotional maturity of a 15-year-old boy?”

“Steve is the only person on the planet who knows you’re gay and the only person who knows we’re together.”

“God, you’re right, that’s the worst part.”

“How did that happen?”

Robin finds herself taking the question seriously, even if it’s rhetorical.

“I trust him,” she admits. “Like he… he made himself trustworthy. He was cool about it, when I told him about the Tammy Thompson stuff, and he’s been cool about it ever since, and I was like, why not, I guess. What’s the worst that could happen? That he’s jealous of my awesome girlfriend? Whatever. He had his chance.”

“Awesome, huh?”

“And terrifying,” Robin adds. “Definitely still that.”

“Yes,” says Nancy, not missing a beat. “And you are very, very brave.”

////

Robin doesn’t sleep that night. As predicted.

She lays in the dark in her bed with Nancy half-draped over her, chest pressed against her side, arm folded around her, and she strokes absently at Nancy’s forearm and looks at her closed, locked bedroom door and thinks, and thinks, and thinks.

Brave.

Nancy stirs, at one point.

Robin stills. Waits for her to settle again.

Once she has, Robin leaves a light kiss on the top of her head, and goes back to her thinking.

////

Max has a birthday, which means it’s time for another barbecue.

She lives with her mom in a little trailer park on the outskirts of town, someplace Robin’s not been before. The gang pitch in to make it all come together: Lucas brings balloons and streamers, Steve brings the meat, Mike and Nancy unload the little barbecue and a gas bottle from the back of their mom’s station wagon. Eddie brings his boombox and tapes, and Dustin pulls five bags of candy out of his backpack with a flourish. Will produces a blank sketchbook with nice paper and a fancy felt tip pen—an actual gift, which he says everyone pitched in on but Robin can tell was mostly him and Lucas’s doing. Jonathan’s not here. Bummer.

Robin helps Nancy with the gas bottle, returns to the car with her so she can shut the tailgate and lock it.

“Hey,” Nancy says.

“Hey,” Robin replies.

The sun’s setting behind her, a nice breeze ruffling her hair. She’s wearing it down today.

“You look really pretty,” Robin says.

“You look very dashing,” Nancy replies.

They’ve got their hands clasped together, and they’re standing close—too close, Robin thinks, just a reflex.

Nancy realises it, too. They approach the edge of the yard behind Max’s trailer, a half-corner away from being visible to everyone setting up, and Nancy starts to untangle their hands—that unwinding, the creation of distance. And Robin holds on. Squeezes her fingers. Her palms are starting to sweat. Blood’s rushing in her ears.

Nancy glances from their hands to her face. Squeezes back, with a question in her eyes.

Robin thinks of herself again.

Her 15-year-old self. Her 10-year-old self.

She shifts closer so she can keep her voice low.

“I was thinking,” she says, “if you wanted to kiss me hello, you can.”

Nancy’s head tilts. Careful consideration.

“Right here?”

Robin nods. Eager. Now she’s said it, she knows how much she means it.

Which is always the thing, isn’t it. Not realising how much you want something until you finally let yourself have it.

“You’re sure?”

Robin swallows, and she’s crushing the shit out of Nancy’s hand, and she tells her, “I think what I’m really afraid of is being afraid forever.”

“Buck…”

“I know people suck,” she says, because Nancy’s using that sensible voice, that let’s think about this a second voice, and if there’s one thing Robin wants less than to be sensible it’s to be freaking thinking some more. “And the world is a shitty place sometimes, I know that, I do, but like—look at Steve, right? And look at—look at all those doofuses. Listen to that. They’re morons. But they’re not assholes. Like really, really, a lot of the time, when you let yourself have the thing you want, the thing you told yourself you shouldn’t want, you were fucked up for wanting, that everybody wouldn’t understand why you… When you get it, the only thing that actually changes is you—you have it. And it’s really, really, really good.”

Nancy touches her cheek. Her face is going pink.

“Really good,” she agrees.

Robin tilts her head to kiss her palm. She’s shaking a little, but it’s okay. It’s going to be okay.

“I don’t want to be scared anymore,” she whispers. “I just want to be me. And be with you. If that’s-”

Nancy pulls her in to a kiss so fierce it steals her breath.

Stops her heart.

Stops everything, really.

Thoughts. Noise. Fear. Especially the fear.

Nancy tastes like black coffee and the spearmint gum she chewed after she drank it.

Nancy’s hand is holding her jaw, and her arm.

Robin forgets where they are and finds herself tilting her head to lick into her mouth.

“AWOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!”

Oh fff-

They separate as if electrocuted. Breathing heavy.

Nancy’s pink.

Robin’s face is hot enough they could grill the burger patties on it if the barbecue fails.

A racket kicks off over by the folding tables—enthusiastic banging and hollering.

“Alright!”

Eddie, it’s Eddie making most of the noise.

“Holy shit.”

Mike.

“Nice.”

Dustin.

“Jesus. Okay.”

Steve.

“Best. Birthday. Ever.”

Max.

“OW-OW-OWWWWWW—ouch, shit, dude-”

Steve hits him with the spatula again. “Be cool, would you?”

“Holy shit,” Mike says again.

He gets a spatula slap, too.

Lucas looks up from his tomato-slicing. “What? What did I miss?”

Everyone’s looking at her. At Nancy. At her and Nancy.

Will included.

He looks surprised. Thoughtful. Relieved?

Robin finds the self-awareness to smile at him. And wink. Which makes him smile back.

There's recognition there. Robin knows there is. She feels it, too.

She hopes her bravery might help make him brave, one day. Whatever that'd mean for him. When he's ready.

“Don’t worry about it,” Max says to Lucas, and then sees what he’s doing. “I hate tomatoes.”

“Well, not everyone here is you.”

“I like tomatoes.”

“See?”

“Why do we need tomatoes when we have ketchup?”

“There’s no ketchup here.”

“Fuck off.”

“Why’re you cutting them so thickly?”

“I’m doing it wrong?”

“Whoa—Harrington—Allow me. I am the flame-master. I am Master of the Flame.”

“If I feel like getting us all blown up, I’ll get you involved.”

Nobody’s looking at them anymore.

It’s over.

Gently anticlimactic, in the way only terribly important things have the capacity to be.

Nancy recovers first, of course, because Robin cannot recover, for she is dead.

“Come on,” she says, clearing her throat. Robin enjoys a sweet thrill at the thought of throwing Nancy Wheeler off-balance with one kiss. Can’t deny she’s a little off-balance, too. But she’s still holding on to Nancy, and Nancy’s still holding on to her. “If we don’t get in there, Steve will put himself in charge of cooking the meat.”

“God,” Robin groans. “Now that is terrifying.”