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In the middle of the night, old rocks turn over to show their ugly bellies.
Robin knows this, because the middle of the night is murky, and thick, and dark in a way that no other time of the day is. Robin knows this, because sometimes when the darkness is too much and too thick, she searches for something that’s her own. Something to ground herself. Something to remind herself that she’s real – and what is more real than the ugly things that you would rather keep hidden for the rest of your life?
What’s more real than the feelings that you swallow and digest and let swirl around you stomach for all of eternity?
In the middle of the night, people go searching for their real feelings – and unfortunately for Robin, it’s always the middle of the night in the Upsidedown.
–
It starts, when she’s spit out on the other side of Watergate.
She lands in a heap of bones and grunts and coughs, dogpiled on top of Nancy, who is a lot stronger than Robin had ever given her credit for, and Robin is a lot weaker than she’d ever thought herself to be – so she scrambles to the side, and she throws up what feels like a gallon of water. She wills herself to calm down. She hopes and prays that Nancy is looking away while she makes a fool of herself.
Eddie Munson says, oh that’s gnarly, somewhere behind her.
Nancy whispers, it’s alright, Robin. You’re okay, and Robin should’ve known it was a pipe dream to ever hope that the universe would give her one damn thing. To hope that the universe wouldn’t let her embarrass herself in front of the girl she’s been steadily and wrongfully falling in love with over the last few days.
Seasickness, y’know? she sputters out, while water drips from between her lips, stringing between the ground and her mouth. Nancy’s hand lies static on her back, like she’s meaning to comfort Robin.
It feels like a hot coal. Robin wants it off, Robin wants it gone.
It also feels a little like coming home.
Before she can say or do anything stupid, someone that sounds like Steve fucking Harrington screeches in the distance, and Nancy is gone.
–
(One of the demon-bat-things wraps its tail around Nancy’s neck.
Robin slams it halfway back to Hawkins.
Nancy watches her after that, for a bit, with a sticky kind of disbelief. The kind that makes her stumble on her way to getting to Steve. The kind that makes her shake her head to focus when Steve is cupping his hands over his leaking intestines.
Robin shrugs like it’s nothing. She shoves her hand through her hair, and offers a half-hearted lopsided grin. Nancy’s cheeks feel hot. Her chest feels hot. They’re here for more important things — and now is definitely not the time to unpack all this — but she does give Robin a squeeze on the arm. She lets it feel nice. Lets it feel warm.
And then she goes back to rubbing up and down Steve’s back.
That’s all it is: just a bit of friendship. It’s been a long time since Nancy’s had one of those.
Yeah.
Friendship.)
–
“Are you okay?” Nancy asks, when they’ve got Steve limping behind them, leaning on Eddie’s shoulder.
Robin looks away. Her stomach turns. She’s hyper aware of her messy hair and the fabric of her clothes on her skin and the wetness of her socks squelching in her shoes.
She’s fine.
“Yeah,” she says. Forces a smile. It feels watery. It must look it, too, because Nancy grimaces. “I’m fine, Nance, don’t worry about me.”
They crunch through the fake leaves – they look like falling ash – and avoid the writhing vines. Nancy stays at her side. Robin’s stomach rolls, black sludge slushing around in her stomach, painting her insides with shame and guilt. She can hear Steve’s labored breathing behind her. She can hear the joy in his pained little breaths – the happiness. Nancy came after him. Nancy jumped into the literal pits of hell for him. Lucky bastard.
“It’s just,” Nancy starts again, like there’s something eating at her. “You’ve seemed… upset. Since the boat.”
“Have I?”
Robin wants to strangle herself with her bare hands. She wants to step on a vine and let Vecna come for her. She wants to grab Nancy and kiss–
“Don’t do that,” Nancy responds, and she sounds so annoyed it snaps a band at the base of Robin’s spine. “You - you just said we’re friends. Friends are supposed to tell each other things, you know? Not.. bottle them up. Not at a time like this.”
If Robin once knew how to properly process emotions, it’s become a foreign concept to her now. She just wants out of this. She wants to go back home. She wants to go back to selling VHS tapes with Steve in their shitty little store, and she wants to go back to whispering muppet jokes to Vickie in the stands of an auditorium. Simpler times.
“I can’t tell you about this,” she says, and shakes her head. Steve groans again behind her. Eddie mumbles something along the lines of heavy bastard. Robin digs her heels in. Clutches her jacket tighter around her waist. “We’re friends by chance, but that’s it. Don’t read too much into it.”
Nancy’s eyebrows knit together. She pulls back into herself. For all of Robin’s inability to read social cues – she can tell this: Nancy is hurt. Good, she thinks. At least she’ll stop asking questions. At least this means Robin can let her feelings gurgle and scream and thrash about in her chest for however long it takes for them to go away, and she can do this in peace. In silence. Without anyone – especially Nancy – ever knowing that they had existed in the first place.
“Nance,” Steve calls from behind them.
Nancy falls behind. Eddie takes her place.
Robin forces a smile and keeps going.
–
Nancy wraps Steve’s abdomen with a piece of her shirt.
Robin’s fists clench in her pockets.
“Yo,” Eddie whispers in her ear. “They’re, like, super soulmates, right?”
Robin tastes copper in her mouth. Her tongue gets hot and thrashes about in her mouth. She bites down on it to keep it from moving. She loves Steve. She wants the best for him. She wants the best for Nancy, too. And whatever that is – it definitely isn’t getting stuck in Hawkins with the barely-college-eligible lesbian.
“Yeah,” she says, and she wonders if they can see the blood pour down the corners of her mouth. Wonders if it paints her chin red. Wonders if any of it even matters to any of them. “Super soulmates.”
–
(“Are you and Robin okay?” Steve whispers, spit blowing stringy air bubbles over his lips. “I know I’m like- super conked out right now, but- I know tension when I see it.”
Nancy tugs on his bandage, tight. He groans.
“Jesus, Nance. Easy.”
“Sorry,” she mutters, and loosens it.
Something settles in the silence. Like molasses. It’s a weight, and it’s not one Nancy is sure she can carry. Not now. Not in the middle of everything.
Are you and Robin okay? I know tension when I see it.
If she thought Steve could survive being punched in the ribs right now, she would do it.
He’s warm under her touch. This is a boy she has loved – and is pretty sure, to some extent, still loves – and yet there are no seeds to be found in this soil. No flowers to be grown, they’ve all been plucked and immortalized. They’re kept safe – but they’re kept. Nothing to nourish, nothing to encourage. And Nancy knows this, the way she knows the sky is blue.
Nancy knows this the way she knows that no, her and Robin are not okay.
She watches Eddie whisper something to Robin out of the corner of her eye, and she accidentally makes Steve groan in agony again.
So maybe what she’s feeling is a little different from friendship.)
-
Her head starts to buzz.
Steve and Eddie have fallen behind them again, somehow, and Nancy seems determined to hold her silence.
Robin finds that it festers a bit. An itch that won’t go away. A wound that won’t close.
“Nance,” she tries, pathetic. Her voice is small, it gets lost in the wind and the debris. Nancy must hear her, anyway, but she just flinches. Doesn’t say anything.
“Nance, come on,” she tries again.
Steve and Eddie laugh at something behind them. The earth rumbles under their feet. Robin barely manages to not fall over like a baby deer. This is what being in a life or death situation for days on end makes out of them – fragile little people with even more fragile emotions. Robin hasn’t felt this much like an exposed live wire in her whole life; not even when they were fighting what seemed like the antithesis of God himself in the middle of a mall last summer.
“Nance, stop,” she sighs, and grabs at her elbow.
Nancy stops. And then she jerks her elbow out of Robin’s hand. It stings, but she probably deserved that.
“What do you want, Robin?” she practically hisses, head turned down, eyes cast to the side. Her neck is rigid, sticking out prominently the way it does when she’s upset. Or when she’s swallowing down things that she couldn’t possibly say out loud. Robin knows that feeling all too well, though she’s sure her and Nancy freakin’ Wheeler haven’t experienced it in the same way. “One minute you’re telling me I’m your friend and that you want me to be happy and all that bullshit, and the next minute you’re basically telling me to piss off, and now you want my attention again?”
Robin swallows.
It sticks in her throat. Crawls down to her chest, down to her stomach, sits in her gut. Heavy.
“I know. I know, and I’m sorry.”
“No, you’re not,” Nancy whispers, digging into herself, curling into her own ribcage. “You meant it. You didn’t want to tell me whatever it is you’re going through, which is fine, I mean – you’re not obligated to tell me all your woes, but you didn’t have to say it like that.”
Robin almost falls to her knees. Almost begs for forgiveness. She hates this. She hates being on the side of the wrong. On the side of the damned. Grief and guilt are nasty brothers, and they are a package deal.
Keeping secrets means holding pins and needles in your mouth. Keeping secrets means watching the girl you’ve been slowly (rapidly, honestly) falling in love with press her mouth into a thin line and watching her white knuckle her own biceps.
Robin is so sick and tired of secrets – and it’s always the middle of the night on this side.
But she’s done this so long, she doesn’t know any other way of life. Doesn’t know any other option. Hearts are broken and chests cave in. Ex-boyfriends become current boyfriends and girls with silly little crushes on other girls are forgotten. That’s just how the world works. So she holds her pins and needles in her mouth, and she speaks around them. Stabs herself on them.
“Say it like what?”
Nancy’s eyes are sharp when they cut to Robin. Her jaw works back and forth. Here’s a battle they’re both losing. A battle that is, somehow, harder than anything they’ve fought yet.
In the end, Nancy caves first.
(This is unusual for her, but she blames it on the fact that they’ve been running on nothing but adrenaline for the last few days. She blames it on the situation and on the Upsidedown and on anything and everything. It’s easier that way. Easier than to blame herself. For someone who spends a lot of time holding up mirrors in front of other people’s faces in the name of journalism, she’s awful at extending the same courtesy to herself.)
“You said it like-” she huffs, waves her hands. Robin watches this, slightly amused. “-like this means nothing to you. I - we - mean nothing to you.”
Robin wrings her wrists. Shuffles back and forth. She’s fidgety when she’s nervous. “I didn’t mean it like that. You know I care about you.”
Nancy turns to look at her. Robin forces herself to hold the gaze. To hold steady. She can hear the boys getting closer behind them – she’s not sure how they’d fallen so far behind – but she doesn’t move. She can’t tell what Nancy’s thinking. Her eyes are stone cold in the Upsidedown light.
“There’s a good chance one of us is going to die tonight, you know that, right?” Nancy says, tone too level, too calm.
“Of course I do,” Robin scoffs. “But it’s sure as hell not going to be you, Wheeler.”
“Why not?”
“Uh, ‘cause your overzealous golden retriever of an ex and I are not going to let that happen?”
Nancy’s mouth twitches. “No?”
“No.”
Robin’s fairly sure she’s getting smited to hell and back right now. If hell is any different from where they’re standing. In which case she’s doing her penance and committing her sins all at the same time. Two for one deal, and whatnot.
“Well, Steve and I wouldn’t let you die either,” Nancy says, turning her head away, shielding her face from Robin’s view. “Just so you know.”
“Damn,” Robin breathes. Her heart is an open, aching wound. Nancy pours bucket after bucket of salt into it. To have her so close but to not have her at all – to want her, and to know that she means all of this platonically – it’s cruel, really. “We’re really hanging Munson out to dry, huh?”
Nancy laughs. Robin’s ribcage rattles, her poor heart, a caged bird.
There’s a beat of silence.
It shepherds and drags Robin and Nancy under its wings.
And then—
“I like Steve,” Nancy says, slowly.
If a heart could audibly be heard breaking, Robin’s fairly sure hers would be heard all the way in Hawkins.
“I know,” she says, and turns away, clenching her jaw, flexing her hands. She was stupid to even let hope fester. It’s a disease. “Trust me, I know, and I want you guys to-”
“Robin.”
Robin jerks. Falters. Her mouth snaps shut.
Nancy watches her with hooded eyes, with intention on her lips, and with something Robin can’t decipher for the life of her.
“Has anyone ever told you you’re really dense sometimes?”
Robin laughs weakly.
“Uh, yeah. A few times.”
“And that you really love to not let people finish their train of thought.”
Robin rubs the back of her neck. “Sorry.”
Nancy rolls her eyes. The boys are closer. The crunching of their feet is louder now. Their laughter, their whispered jokes, an argument or two here and there. Something like panic flickers in Nancy’s eyes as she looks over Robin’s shoulder.
And then—
“I like Steve,” she gets out, quickly, quietly. “But he’s not the one I like.”
And Robin hardly has time to process the words before the world shakes and they’re thrown forward; before their real problems rear their ugly heads, and she can’t think about it, can’t think about Nancy and her pretty lips and prettier words, can’t think about what she just said even means—
“Go, go, go!” Steve yells from behind them, and so they sprint. And Robin puts it all on the back burner.
But she does let it make her feel warm.
She does let her arm brush Nancy’s as they run side by side. She does let herself notice when Nancy shoots her a small smile.
—
(“Did you sort your shit with Robin out?” Steve whispers when he presses close to Nancy, earnest to a fault. His eyes are wide, hopeful, the corners of his mouth wilting like he’s ready for bad news, too. “I’m just asking because you guys look… cozier.”
Nancy steps through her house from three years ago, she runs her fingers through specks of light, she lets the worn floorboards creak under her pressure. She’d made discoveries about herself in these very spots, all those years ago. She’d made them as she thought about Barbara, about her soft lips and her button nose; about her curly hair and the glasses that would just never stay on the bridge of her nose. She’d made those discoveries and she’d ran in the other direction. She’d ran towards Steve.
Fate is a fickle fucking thing.
Here she is, all these years later, and she still has to face herself. She still has to think about soft lips and the curve of bodies in spaces where Steve is flat. She still has to think about how she enjoys that as much as she enjoys Steve.
“Yeah,” she whispers, and her voice cracks. She can feel Robin’s gaze on her from behind. She can feel the world’s gaze on her from everywhere. It’s all fuel to Vecna. She’s feeding him. She’s showing him all the awful things that she’s kept bottled up inside herself for so long. “We sorted it out.”
Steve sighs, long and hard, hands on his hips, mouth wrenching into a smile.
“Thank god. You and Robin are the worst when you’re upset.”
Nancy turns away without saying anything, and goes up towards her bedroom. Robin follows her up. So does Eddie. She doesn’t call for Steve when he turns towards the kitchen on a mission of his own.)
–
Robin thinks there are very few times in her life where she’s willingly let herself slip from reality. She’s a grounded person, she roots her heels in the world of hard cold truths and she doesn’t move from it, because that’s how people get hurt. That’s how hearts break and that’s how people end up traumatized, dead, or both. Especially in Hawkins. So she remembers nights spent on her bed, pressing her face into a pillow, crying over Tammy, wishing the worst on Steve. She also remembers seeing Nancy Wheeler in the hallways, averting her gaze, and walking in the other direction. Those were thoughts she hadn’t even let herself entertain.
But Robin finds herself divorcing her old qualms, with a force unknown. Or a force known, but ignored. A force she’d been oblivious to. It almost seems too good to be true, but it’s right there. It’s there in the way Nancy lingers at her side, in the way Steve almost looks confused when Nancy grabs Robin’s wrist to tug her alongside instead of him. She’s giving herself so much slack, and somewhere, the fear does sit like an anvil, anchors her home, reminds her that maybe Nancy’s only saying and doing these things because one of them might not make it long enough to see the light of day.
Maybe Nancy’s having her one last hurrah before Robin kicks the bucket. Or something.
But then Nancy smiles at her, and says take Mike’s bike. His seat is the highest. For your stupid long legs. And Robin flushes all the way down to her toes.
Been staring at my legs, Wheeler? she says, shy and tentative.
Eddie stares at them. She can feel it on her skin. She ignores it.
Nancy rolls her eyes, but she’s red as the sky itself. Electric and inviting. Robin’s heart is in her throat, her feelings are in her knees, in her fingertips, she’s buckling and falling and–
They’re nice legs.
Robin swears she could die happy.
—
They do a spot check around Eddie’s van, while Steve and Eddie are inside, gawking at the pulsating red hole in the ceiling. The last thing they want is Vecna springing a fast one on them.
“So,” Robin says, quietly, softly. “Just you and me, huh.”
She cringes the second it’s out of her mouth. Nancy rolls her eyes, but smiles nonetheless. Robin likes it when she does that. She looks cute.
“Really? That’s the best you’ve got? That’s almost worse than Steve’s pickup lines.”
“Ouch, Wheeler,” Robin hisses, putting a mock hand of hurt up to her chest. A bat caws in the distance. “I didn’t come out here to be insulted, you know.”
“Right,” Nancy nods. They round the side of the trailer. They’re behind it, where there are no windows, nothing. They’re completely alone, for the first time in the day. “So what did you come out here for?”
Everytime Robin thinks she can’t possibly get anymore flustered, she’s proven wrong.
“Well, I- you know- the spot check-”
And then Nancy’s hand is on her arm. Sliding up her forearm, up to her bicep, squeezing what little muscle she has there. She thinks of domesticity, thinks of a Friday morning, of waking up to this, of going downstairs, making a cup of coffee, and having someone caress her arm up and down. Just like this.
“Yeah,” Nancy whispers, eyes hooded, indicative, provocative. Robin couldn’t misinterpret this if she tried. “The spot check.”
Nancy’s hand slides all the way to her neck, scratches at the spot with her nails. They’re long, broken, dirty. The night has put them through the wringer, Robin doesn’t blame her for the sting that it causes on her neck when the sharp edges of her nails catch on goosebumps.
“Are you sure?” Robin breathes into the air between them. She’s closing the distance. Or Nancy is. Someone’s getting closer. Maybe they both are.
“Robin, you do realize that I’ve been the one doing all the work here, right?”
Robin balks. “I just - I didn’t want to weird you out-!”
“Robin,” Nancy sighs, and brings their foreheads together. “Please kiss me before I lose my mind.”
So Robin does.
–
(It’s all hands and teeth and the end of the world. Robin’s shoulders are tense under her hands, and Nancy’s waist is putty in Robin’s hand. She arches forward, she caves, she lets Robin touch wherever she wants, lets Robin pull her in, lets their hips knock together.
They follow each other’s movements – and it’s a revelation. Nancy knows, on some religious level, that she’ll bad for this when everything goes back to normal. That in the dark of the Upsidedown and the muggy trance that it casts over their consciousness, she isn’t making rational decisions. She’s looking at ripe red apples and she’s plucking them. She’s digging her teeth in, she’s letting the juice run down her chin and her lips and her throat.
It’s not until they hear Steve and Eddie let out a small panicked shout of Robin? Nancy? that they pull away, all smiles. Wiping their mouths, avoiding eye contact, too giddy to acknowledge what they’ve done. Too high on it. It’s embarrassing.
“We should get back to them,” Robin whispers, voice shaky, eyes alight.
“Yeah.”
Neither of them move.
Nancy laughs. Runs a hand through hair, it’s wet and damp and it falls back on her forehead. It’s freezing. She wants to curl up into Robin.
Maybe later she will. When they’re safe, and warm.
“Come on, dork,” Robin says with a roll of her eyes.
Nancy lets Robin lead them back with a hand pressed to the small of her back.)
—
See you on the flipside, Wheeler, Robin tells her. Grabs the rope. Hoists herself up. They’re getting out of this hellhole and then -
And then Robin’s going to do something about this, when everything is over. She’s going to buy tickets to a movie, she’s going to get awful watered down coke and popcorn that’s not nearly salted enough, and she’s going to take Nancy Wheeler out on a date. She’s going to do all of it.
Be careful, Robin, Nancy whispers quietly behind her, hands held up, in case she falls. In case she needs catching.
Here’s a game they’re playing. Who falls for who. Who catches who.
Robin smiles. Always am, cutie.
Steve stares at them. Blinks. Eddie grins, like he’d always seen it coming, and Robin wonders for the first time what the point of him telling her they were super soulmates was. If the intention had actually been as transparent as she’d imagined it — or if this had been his goal the whole time. Lighting a fire. Inciting jealousy. Forcing the pins and needles out of Robin’s mouth.
She climbs up the rope, and she falls on her head. It’s not enough to knock the giddiness out of her.
—
She should’ve known it was all going too well. She should’ve made Nancy come up with her. She should’ve—
—
“We’ll get her back,” Steve says, he sounds distant. He is distant. He’s still up there with her.
“Robin, you need to calm down,” Dustin says. It’s funny. He says it like he’s the older one.
“Guys, stop crowding her,” Max says, and Robin hears the faint sound of Kate Bush still playing over her ears. She wonders what Nancy’s favorite song is.
Steve doesn’t know. He fumbles and throws his hands up, he mutters and groans. He says something about being a shit boyfriend.
Robin agrees. She would’ve known. She would’ve saved her.