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Robin holds her hand in the Upside Down.
It’s reflexive, quick, driven by panic and unease, but Robin holds her hand in the Upside Down. Robin holds her hand like pressing tablecloth down to squeeze out air bubbles. Robin holds her hand like folding the corner of your bed sheet and a forty-five degree angle for the perfect fit. Robin holds her hand the way someone might slide a plant into a pot.
It’s okay, Nancy tells her.
It has to be. It must be.
You got this.
(Because if you don’t–
If you don’t, I don’t know what I would do with myself.)
Robin lets go of her hand, and someone rips a tablecloth out from under spinning plates.
Everything falls apart.
:::
Robin holds her hand. Held her hand. Robin doesn’t do it any more once they escape the Upside Down, once they’re standing in a cold hallway full of fretting nurses and dreary doctors, once there’s so much more to deal with outside of themselves. And maybe it’s the slimy trickery of being an individual person, the selfish wheedling of having a functioning brain, but Nancy can’t stop thinking about holding Robin’s hand again.
“Nance,” Robin says, reaching forward with her foot, tapping her toe against Nancy’s ankle gently. “Sit down, you’re freaking me out.”
Nancy presses her lips into a tight line. Ice seeps into the soles of her feet from the hospital floor; warmth leaks into her body from the spot on her ankle where Robin touched her. Crossroads meeting, that’s always what everything is ever about, isn’t it?
Four cracks meeting and erupting in the middle of Hawkins.
Countless thoughts meeting and erupting inside of Nancy Wheeler.
“Sorry,” she whispers, running a hand through her hair and holding it in a tight scrunch over her scalp before letting it go. She takes a seat next to Robin. She takes care to leave enough space that she can’t feel the heat radiating off of Robin like an invitation. “I’m just… I’m really worried about Max.”
Robin swallows thickly, tilts her head back, lets it knock softly against the wall behind her.
Nancy watches. She watches the stretch of her throat, the pale column of skin, the bobbing and contracting when she swallows.
“She has to be okay, Wheeler,” Robin whispers, twisting her own hands in her lap. “She has to. We came up with the plan. All of us. We let her walk in there knowing what could happen.”
Fear eats a hole in Nancy’s heart. She’s not someone who shows her emotions, she rarely ever even lets herself process her emotions, but Robin’s not like that. She’s aware. She sits back, she rips her heart open, she spills its guts like her heart is a tiny person inside of herself, and she lets the world think what it will about her tiny little heart person.
She’s brave.
She also keeps twisting her hands in her lap and Nancy can’t take her eyes off of it.
Nancy is terrified. Her own little tiny heart person is running a mile a minute. It’s pounding it’s fists on the wall of her chest. It’s screaming, Max is like your little sister, and you let her get mangled to the bone. You weren’t good enough. You weren’t fast enough. You weren’t smart enough.
“She’ll be fine,” Nancy says, jaw locking, eyes trained between the floor and Robin’s hands.
Robin’s head lolls to the side, eyes droopy with fatigue but still taking in Nancy with a level of contemplation that almost makes her squirm.
She doesn’t say anything, which Nancy can’t figure out if she’s more or less thankful for, and the silence stretches for miles. It wraps itself around their bodies, it builds a wall between them and the rest of their friends who are pacing holes into the floor and biting their fingernails bloody. It forces Nancy to look back into Robin’s eyes and find her own destruction lying in wait.
And then–
And then–
Robin reaches for her.
She slides a tentative hand towards her, palm up, knuckles skimming over Nancy’s thigh, the tips of her fingers twitching ever so slightly.
Nancy stares.
And stares.
She wants to tell Robin, don’t offer your hand to me. If I hold it now, I might never let go.
She wants to tell herself, religion has taught you to be merciful. So be that. Let her go. Don’t take her hand when you might rip it clean off.
Robin wiggles her fingers nervously. Nancy blinks.
“Sorry,” Robin says, jerking, eyes widening, as if she’s suddenly aware that maybe Nancy doesn’t want to hold her hand at all. “I thought maybe- shit, sorry- that was stupid.”
Her hand begins to slide off of Nancy’s thigh.
And a thousand little things burst at once. Nancy sees her whole life in a span of a millisecond. She sees unhappiness, she sees going back to Jonathan or Steve even though both of those relationships had ended in flames — she sees sifting through packs of cigarettes and empty beer cans. She sees a hand sliding off her thigh, she sees great big empires of dreams falling, crumbling, turning to dust under her fingertips. She sees and she sees and the hand that gives is leaving her thigh. The hand that holds is abandoning her.
And maybe her nightmares are, in truth, her greatest supporter and motivator because Nancy’s hand shoots out, long and trembling fingers wrapping around Robin’s wrist in a desperate attempt to stop her.
Robin stills, eyes wide.
Nancy stills, eyes closed.
“Nance?” she whispers, and Nancy feels Robin’s pulse jump beneath her palm.
“Don’t go,” Nancy says back, pathetic. Miserable. Desperate.
That’s the long and short of it, isn’t it? Nancy hates herself for it, but the truth is that she needs Robin. She needs her steady shoulders and fast tongue. Her rambling words and her shaky voice. Her lilting smile that sometimes borders on obnoxious but Nancy loves anyways. All of it expands into her chest like inflating a balloon, taking up space, carving out parts of her soul that she’s forgotten even existed in the first place.
Soft, tender parts of herself.
Parts that are love letters to a young Nancy who had once believed in true love. In unyielding love. In commitment and loyalty and someone to safely let your guard down around.
“I’m not going anywhere,” Robin says back, and slides her hand forward until their palms are pressing together. One lifeline against the other. Oh, it’s violent. So very bloody.
It must be.
That’s the reason why Nancy’s heart beats so fast. It must be.
“Promise?” Nancy asks, and finds the cool metal of Robin’s rings under her fingertips as they lace their fingers together.
Robin scoots closer, until their shoulders are touching and Robin’s elbow rests on Nancy’s hip.
“I promise.”
:::
Robin’s collection of rings on her fingers are far and wide. Nancy takes her time rubbing her thumb across all of them, cradling Robin’s hand in her lap, humming some tune of a song that she can no longer remember the name of.
Robin relaxes next to her, head leaned back on the wall, watching and never interrupting. Letting Nancy have her way.
The bitter cold of the future seems far away, for now.
:::
Max is in a coma.
Steve takes a seat in a plastic chair next to her, head braced against the side of her bed. Lucas takes the other side, eyes closed, head bowed against her temple. It’s a treacherous sight. Nancy can’t even bring herself to step too far into the room. Her gut rolls at the thought of seeing Max like that.
So she books it back home.
She slides into her station wagon, slams the door shut, and only makes it halfway to the gas pedal when someone knocks on the window.
It’s Robin. Of course it is.
Nancy bites her lower lip before cranking the window down.
“Running out on us, Wheeler?” Robin asks, voice lofty with levity, but the question underneath is not amiss. Are you okay?
Nancy wrings the steering wheel. “I can’t see her like that, Robin. I’ll come back later. After I’ve processed it all, I guess.”
Robin clicks her tongue. “Hey, no judgment here. I hate hospitals. I was pretty much fighting the urge to run away every single second we were in there.“
Nancy blinks.
Oh, here’s a choice. A pretty girl and a neon sign above their heads, flickering threateningly. A pretty girl and a road in front of them. A pretty girl and an open seat next to Nancy. What are the chances they could go home together tonight? To hold and be held by one another? She could dip her hand into the pot of gold of Robin’s heart, rob her blind, all while she takes her home for the night, and Robin might just let her.
And maybe she shouldn’t. Robin is too good for her. Too kind. But Robin is also smiling at her through the window, head tilted to the side, fingers drumming over the body of the car, and Nancy has spent so long pretending she doesn’t want what she does.
Sometimes, things just snap. The electricity surges and crackles. The sixteen year old girl with a crush on Barbara Holland finally presses her knuckles into the wall of an eighteen year old girl’s mouth, pries it open, forces the words and the blood and the choices out.
“I don’t really want to be alone tonight,” Nancy says, nearly wrangling the steering wheel half to death. The calluses one her palms scream.
Robin pulls her lower lip into her mouth. “Me neither.”
Oh, what a bitch. She’s going to make Nancy say it.
“Then, do you… want to come home with me?”
The words sit between them for just a moment. Just long enough that Nancy’s heart leaps.
“Yeah,” Robin breathes, nodding like there had never been another answer. Another choice. “Yeah, I do, actually.”
Nancy barely holds back her smile as she pops the lock open, watching Robin slide in, all long limbs and lanky body. Her knees nearly touch the dashboard when she sits, and for some reason it makes Nancy blush. Everything about Robin is just so attractive, and now that she’s letting herself notice it — she might never stop.
Nancy throws the car into drive with a concerning amount of force and steps on the gas.
:::
(This is stupid.
Robin knows this is stupid.
What kind of absolute idiot gets in the car with the girl they may or may not be nursing a hopeless crush on? What kind of absolute idiot agrees to stay the night with her when all it’ll do is dig them into a deeper hole of unrequited feelings?
The Robin kind of absolute idiot, apparently.
She presses her hands between her thighs, clamping them tight, wrists bending awkwardly, forcing herself to not look at Nancy. To not think about how good she still looks, completely disheveled from a whole day of literally saving the world; to not think about how they’re trapped in a car, breathing the same air, hearts beating loudly, and how there’s an inkling of doubt in Robin’s brain that maybe Nancy Wheeler isn’t telling the whole truth about why she’s taking Robin home tonight.
But that’s wishful thinking. That’s Robin, still young, still eighteen, still optimistic, talking.
But it’s also real, isn’t it?
It’s Nancy asking her not to go. It’s Nancy holding onto her wrist, shaking like there’s hellfire lapping at her ankles. It’s Nancy playing with the rings on her fingers, and relaxing while she does. Slowly unwinding.
Robin chews on her lower lip and stares out the window.)
:::
The rest of the Wheelers are at a neighbor’s house when Nancy peels into the driveway, which she’s thankful for. She’s not sure how much smothering in her mother’s arms she can take right now.
She motions Robin into the house, and guides her upstairs to her bedroom.
“Tom Cruise,” Robin says with an exasperated sigh, running over to drag her fingers across the poster of his face. “Oh, how I’ve missed you.”
Nancy rolls her eyes while unzipping her army vest, discarding it at the foot of her bed. She’s never messy like this, but after the day they’ve had? She figures she’s allowed a little bit of mess.
“I don’t know why you love that thing so much,” Nancy mumbles, smile in her words. Sunshine in her throat. It’s so easy to forget about the rest of the world when Robin is here with her. “I’m sure you have posters of people, too.”
Robin shrugs. “Guess you’ll never know.”
Nancy’s insides jump. “Does that mean you’re never going to invite me over to your house? Ouch, Robin, I thought we were friends.”
Robin snorts, hand falling away from the poster as she turns around and opts for the bed instead. Nancy raises an eyebrow as she watches her; as some kind of color bleeds from Robin’s cheek, leaving pale skin behind, leaving something almost sad in it’s wake. Nancy’s hands still as she undoes the belt on her pants.
“I promise you, we’re better off just meeting at your house.”
A memory comes to Nancy, a soft voice, a dog turning it’s belly over to expose it’s soft spots.
I know it’s a flaw. Believe me, my mother reminds me daily.
Nancy’s arms drop to her sides as she takes in Robin on her bed, shoulders hunched, hands tucked away somewhere in front of her, head bowed. There’s no summer sun here, no popsicles melting on fingers, no sticky sweetness of a childhood well-spent. It’s nothing like the memories Nancy has of her young life. It’s red hot, it’s dewy in an unpleasant way, it’s hot coals under bare feet and snakes writhing around tender hearts, squeezing away until there’s nothing left.
She rounds the bed, and takes a seat next to Robin, who’s staring down at her feet.
“Well, that’s alright, my house is pretty much a hotel for literally every single one of my friends anyway, so,” she shrugs, tilting her head forward, smiling as softly as she can.
Robin looks at her, freckles darkened under the low light, mouth twisted in an emotion Nancy can’t quite decipher, and eyebrows pulled together. “You’re serious?”
Nancy blinks. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
Robin laughs. It’s hollow. A cave echoes. “I’m sure you’ve heard the rumors, Wheeler.”
There’s a small drizzle that begins on the outside. Nancy hears it faintly, in the background, with her eyes trained on the slope of Robin's nose, and the bow of her mouth. Oh, this is dangerous, she thinks. Oh, this is how empires fall and people become immortal statues, this is how bravery begins: in the small seed of desire, watered, nurtured, raised into something that leaves it’s mark in the soil.
Of course Nancy has heard the rumors. It’s not like Robin exactly tries to be secretive about it. The drawing of breasts on the red fabric of her converse peeks out from underneath the cuff of her jeans.
“I don’t care,” Nancy says, slowly, warbling, the palms of her hands itching.
And then Robin looks at her–
Really looks at her–
Something hazy makes her eyes unfocus, or maybe they’re focused on something else, Robin’s not looking at Nancy’s face any longer, she’s looking at Nancy’s shoulder, she’s looking at her bicep, she’s looking at her forearm, she’s looking at–
She’s looking at Nancy’s hands.
Her pulse jumps in her throat. So does Robin’s. She can practically see the thrumming under her skin. In her carotid. Pounding. Screaming. Thrashing.
“Yeah,” Robin whispers, nodding. “I kinda got the feeling that you wouldn’t.”
And Nancy doesn’t have the time to decipher whatever that means before Robin’s holding her hand out again, fingers twitching, the same way she had when they were in the hospital. She looks at Nancy expectantly, like she knows what Nancy needs better than even Nancy knows, and she must. She must, because suddenly ash thickens Nancy’s throat as she stares down at Robin’s hands.
This is what she wanted. This is what she was wishing for. She hadn’t even known it, but Robin had.
She clasps Robin’s hand between her own, thumb settling on the rings, playing with them, rotating them, teeth grinding in her mouth at the sheer comfort of it all.
“Robin,” Nancy breathes. Palm to palm, again. They find themselves here too much.
“Nancy,” Robin intones.
“You know that Jonathan and I broke up before spring break, right?” she says, unblinking. Unmoving. Confessions are all they have sometimes. It’s funny, that way. The human experience. How much of your reality can be shaped by things other people say and do. Nancy might never have done this if Jonathan had never broken up with her. She’d still be ankle deep in love with him, eyes closed to the rest of the world.
Robin inhales sharply, eyes trained on their hands, not looking at Nancy. “Why?”
Nancy shrugs. “Just wasn’t working out for him anymore. That’s what he said.”
“And how do you fee–”
“I really don’t want to talk about that right now,” Nancy whispers, cutting Robin off, cutting away her last lifeline. Hacking at it. Severing it. She’s left adrift now. Nothing but her and her truth.
Robin swallows so thick Nancy can hear it. “Okay. We don’t have to.”
Someone drives past the house. Red light beams through Nancy’s window. Illuminates everything in a hellish color. She sees all of it. She sees the splash of it against Robin’s cheek, she sees it cover their hands, her room, spilling out into the hallway.
A truth spills out of Nancy.
“I was scared,” she says, and grips Robin’s hand tighter. Burrows herself in the comfort of metal rings and moisturized palms. “When the vine got you. I was so scared.”
Robin makes a soft noise in the back of her throat, squeezing Nancy’s hand. “Hey, Nance. I’m okay. We’re okay.”
Nancy winces. “But we almost weren’t. You almost weren’t. And Max is…”
She trails off.
Robin pulls her closer. It’s a strangely brave gesture for a girl who always looks half a breath from a breakdown, but she yanks at Nancy until their hands are intertwined in Robin’s lap and the sides of their thighs are pressing together. The dirt on their clothes has nowhere to go, trapped between them.
“Max will be okay, too,” she whispers, voice low, gravelly, raspy in a way that Nancy has never heard another girl’s voice be. It makes something stir in her stomach. Something that she files away for later because now is definitely not the time to be dealing with it. “She’s a strong girl. Probably the strongest fifteen year old I know.”
Nancy laughs. It’s true. She’d spent her whole life flipping people off and running over their toes with her skateboard.
“And as far as you and I go…” Robin breathes, wheeze rattling in her throat, fear making a puppet out of both of them. “I wouldn’t ever let anything happen to you.”
Oh, beautiful selfless Robin Buckley. Nancy could cry.
“Why do you care?” Nancy asks, and digs the metal of Robin’s rings into the tips of her fingers. “We only met — I mean really met – a few days ago.”
Robin regards her with a funny look. “Why do you care?”
Ah.
Nancy’s cheeks heat. They redden.
“Right,” she whispers.
“Right,” Robin repeats, knocking their shoulders together.
A beat of silence passes. Nancy thinks about her childhood, about Barbara, about Steve and Jonathan. She thinks about everything and nothing. She thinks about the church, about needing to beg for forgiveness for the grave sins she’s committing. She thinks about not giving a fuck. She thinks about how she hasn’t been to a single Sunday sermon since she was old enough to stay at home by herself, and she thinks about how those people in church are like jagged cliff rocks. How they pierce and they impale and they hold people hostage.
How Nancy will never let them get her.
And then Robin breaks the silence.
“Caring for each other probably means we’re going to die horrible deaths, you know that right?”
Nancy gawks and Robin laughs, full and throaty. Nancy can’t help but feel her stomach twist at the sight. God, she’s beautiful.
:::
(Nancy leaves after a while to go take a shower, and she leaves behind all her contemplation and her bullet shells. She leaves behind the discarded ammo of her words and the wounds they dig deep into Robin’s torso. Wounds that she cherishes. Wounds that she runs her fingers over, relishes in the blood that seeps from them, and hopes they never close.
Anything for Nancy Wheeler.)
:::
They share a bed.
Robin insists on sleeping on the floor. She twitches, she jerks, she practically pleads. The fear is right there, in her eyes. She doesn’t want to make Nancy uncomfortable, after all of it, after everything, she’s still fearful of doing the wrong thing. Nancy’s heart aches for her.
I need you, she says, purely, wholly. Please, Robin. Hold me?
And so Robin does.
She clambers into the bed behind Nancy after shedding her vest and her boots, left in a black shirt and army pants, and pulls Nancy’s back to her chest. She’s so much taller, and broader, she feels like a universe consuming a small planet. She feels like home.
Oh, she hears Robin breathe against the shell of her ear, body slackening. She seeks out Nancy’s hand resting against her stomach and brackets it with her own. She encompassses Nancy completely and wholly.
“I’ve never done this before,” Robin admits, quietly, speaking against the nape of Nancy’s neck. It takes everything in her not to shiver against the feeling.
“Cuddled?”
Robin hums in assent.
Nancy digs further back against her, pulling Robin’s arm tighter around her body. “Do you like it?”
Robin takes a moment. She shuffles. She scoots closer. She inhales and exhales. Nancy feels all of it, almost as if she was living inside of Robin’s very body. How wonderful would that be? To be hidden in the chest of that which you adore so deeply. To always be safe within them. To ensure that if their heart were ever to stop beating, you would be gone with it, too. It’s morbid, but that’s just the state of affairs.
“Yeah,” she says finally, digging her forehead against the back of Nancy’s neck. “I do.”
:::
Nancy plays with Robin’s rings the whole night.
Robin falls into a deep sleep against her back, their chests rising in falling at the same time. They move as one.
:::
It becomes a habit.
When they’re standing in Max’s room, watching her as El enters her mind, Nancy reaches for Robin’s hand, playing with her rings.
When they wait for jobs to be assigned to them at the local shelter, Nancy’s thumb wanders. Presses against cool metal. Robin doesn’t even flinch, just moves her hand closer.
When Nancy gets a nightmare and calls Robin over, she waits in her bed until Robin climbs through her window and wraps herself around Nancy’s waist. She grips Robin’s hand tight. She doesn’t have rings that night, so she rubs her thumb over Robin’s knuckles and it works just as well.
Are you alright? Robin whispers, tugging at Nancy’s hand until she turns over, looking into her eyes, imploring, probing. Stars explode over their heads, Nancy’s heart is in her throat. Robin is so close.
Perfect, she breathes.
Robin blinks. The drape falls around them. The silence, heavy and raw, ticks away like a clock. Nancy’s breath is trapped in her throat, and Robin’s eyes keep fluttering down to her mouth.
“I really want to kiss you.”
The admission slips out of Nancy like water. Like blood.
Robin exhales shakily, eyes fluttering shut.
The silence gets heavier.
“Are you sure?” Robin whispers.
Nancy leans in. She’s begging wordlessly. This is what a woman at her worst becomes. Nothing but a wordless plea.
“Robin, please.”
Robin’s throat bobs and her eyes open. Nancy swears the bible is jealous — nothing could be quite as religious as the look in Robin’s eyes. The devotion. The bloody truth.
They’re ripped apart, ravaged, insides left asunder and at each other’s mercy.
“I really like you, Wheeler,” Robin whispers, knocking their foreheads together, hands still tangled between their bodies. “So if this is just some game to you–”
“It’s not,” Nancy presses, their noses brushing, their lips skimming. “I promise. It’s not.”
And so the chasm yawns beneath them and swallows them whole.
Robin opens her mouth and captures Nancy’s lower lip, humming with the force of something that’s been pressed and folded into a small corner for so long that it sings when it’s released. Nancy whimpers, trembling under Robin’s mouth, fingers gripping, grasping, pulling.
“Oh my god,” she breathes softly when they come apart.
Robin blinks, dazed. “Shit.”
Nancy’s mouth splits into a grin and her hand slides across the nape of Robin’s neck and pulls her back in for another.
:::
(Robin kisses her everywhere.
She pins Nancy against the side of her car in a field where no one can see them. She grabs Nancy’s waist and pulls her into a bathroom, giggling against each other’s mouths, kissing until they’re breathless. Kissing until a deity unravels at their fingers, until they could be gods themselves, high on power, soaked in the essence of a lover.
Nancy always gasps in her mouth, puts her hands on Robin’s shoulders, steadies herself.
It’s intoxicating.
Robin can’t get enough of her.
“You’re so beautiful,” she whispers one day, head on Nancy’s stomach as Nancy plays with hair, scratching her scalp.
“You can’t even see me,” Nancy giggles, voice soft and amused.
Robin squeezes her thigh. “I don’t need to. It pains me to admit this, but you’re the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen.”
Nancy doesn't say anything else, just sits up and tilts Robin’s head back until she can slot their mouths together.
Robin has learned, over time, that this is the way Nancy expresses her love. That Nancy isn’t good with words when it comes to affection but she’s good with actions. She kisses like she’s cracking open the center of the earth, she kisses like she’s reading the rings in the trunk of a tree— with care and passion. With intention.
Robin loves it about her.
Robin’s fairly sure she loves her.)
:::
And on the day that ash falls from the sky, Robin is right next to Nancy. Their hearts freeze over in their mouths as El steps forward, determination in her steps, shoulders set and steady, anger raw in her heart after all that she’s seen.
After Max.
This time, it’s Robin who reaches for Nancy first.
“Stay close,” she whispers, and Nancy presses a kiss to her jaw, trembling.
“Always.”