Chapter Text
SUMMER 1987
Nancy didn’t mean to see it, and to be honest she wasn’t sure what she’d seen at first.
She had become accustomed to visiting the radio station whenever she felt like it. And lately, she’d felt like it quite often.
It had been months of nothing but being quarantined with a house full of people. People she loved and even someone she was supposedly in a romantic relationship with. But it was suffocating in the way only uninterrupted time with family could be. Couple that with finally graduating high school only to be literally stuck inside your small hometown indefinitely…it could weigh on a girl.
So she spent many days hanging out with her ex-boyfriend who was clearly still not over things and Robin. Her friend? Best friend? All she knew was she went from being utterly annoyed and overwhelmed by Robin to finding her to be the least annoying and least overwhelming person she could find to talk to and spend time with.
Robin was smart, funny, and a shockingly good DJ. It turned out people who don’t have filters made for excellent radio show hosts where they just spent their time talking into a microphone. Nancy figured it must be strange to talk and talk to an audience you couldn’t see or hear responding, all while acting like it was a casual conversation. But Robin pulled it off.
And admittedly, Nancy did sometimes spend too much time in her own head. Sometimes it was all that kept her sane when Robin filled in all the silence with whatever came to mind. And when even Robin managed to run out of things to say, they could just listen to music or watch a movie. But lately Robin hadn’t been coming over as much. Or inviting Nancy over as much. She spent a lot of time either goofing off with Steve at the radio station or with Vickie.
Which was fine of course. Vickie also seemed to completely lack a filter from what Nancy could gather. Nancy couldn’t even imagine how their conversations worked. Were they just rapidly spouting off words at one another and nodding enthusiastically in agreement? But they clearly got along well and figured out things to do together because Nancy could hardly catch Robin alone anymore.
Speaking of which, the first thing Nancy noticed was Vickie’s car outside the station. Of course. It was a little weird that Steve wasn't there, but then again maybe he’d already left after the show wrapped up.
She entered the station and it felt like a library. It was so quiet. But she could hear Vickie giggling a bit while Robin said something low and playful in her raspy voice.
Nancy wasn’t sure why she didn’t call out Robin’s name. It would’ve made sense so she didn’t startle them. But instead she turned the corner and saw them.
It was a split second before Robin made eye contact with Nancy from over Vickie’s shoulder. They had been standing close. Very close. Robin had been backed up against her desk with her one hand splayed out behind her for balance while Vickie stood over her. The other hand traveled down from somewhere it had been…on Vickie? That couldn’t be right though.
“Nancy?” Robin sputtered in shock.
Unfortunately, Nancy had gotten good at detecting what fear looked like in her friends. It was weird to see someone look so afraid outside of the context of life-sized monsters from her brother’s Dungeons & Dragons games attacking them. But she knew what Robin looked like when she was afraid, and in that split second upon seeing Nancy, she was inexplicably terrified.
“Huh?” Vickie said, turning around. “Oh! Hey Nancy. Coming to hang out with Robin? That’s fine, I — I was just…leaving for the hospital anyway.” Vickie mumbled a goodbye to Robin and walked out.
Robin still seemed a bit flushed. Neither spoke for a moment. Nancy broke the silence.
“Sorry to surprise you, but they were driving me nuts at the house and I had to get out. I didn’t mean to interrupt anything.” Nancy cautiously said.
“Of course not! There’s nothing to interrupt. We were just discussing band stuff.” Robin half-heartedly mimed playing the trumpet before letting her hands fall back to her desk again.
“Hm….even though we all graduated so neither of you are in band anymore?” Nancy approached and stepped close to Robin. She was trying to get a sense of just how close Vickie had been standing. This looked about right…and felt very close. Robin’s breath seemed to catch a bit from the proximity, and for an even more baffling moment she seemed like she was having trouble starting to speak. But good reporters knew when to let silence linger.
Robin nervously let out what sounded like approximately half a laugh. “I mean…we also volunteered together at the emergency center. That’s when we realized how much there was to discuss about how to maintain instruments during a quarantine and finding joy in music even in dark times.” Robin glanced towards the window as she said this, thinking about the cracked open earth covered only in metal.
“Some people even like listening to sad music when they are upset to feel less upset. I try to steer away from programming it upfront on the radio show though. Seems like it is setting the day up to fail when you start with melancholy ballads.” Robin rambled.
There she was. The real Robin. Even if she was still being weirdly evasive about Vickie.
“You and Vickie have been hanging out a lot lately.” Nancy playfully bumped Robin’s shoulder before turning to walk away and flop on the couch. “It has been harder for us to spend time together. And you’re the only person in the world not driving me insane at this point.” She added.
Robin followed her with a smile, bumping Nancy’s knees with her own to shoo her over so she could sit next to her. “I know. But I’m all yours now.”
Nancy smiled at the thought. Then she thought of something else.
“Robin?” She asked, still working out what she was trying to figure out. And even if she wanted to know. Robin nodded at her to continue. “Why weren’t you and Steve ever a thing?”
“What?!” Robin blurted. “We’ve already told you there’s nothing between us a million times. Besides, he’s clearly pretty into you. As he’s made perfectly clear to everyone including your current boyfriend.”
Something flitted behind Robin’s eyes as she looked closely at Nancy’s for a moment before looking away again. Nancy couldn’t place what the look meant. Annoyance was the closest emotion it seemed to resemble for obvious reasons. The three of them had already beaten this dead horse a lot. But maybe Robin’s reaction had also been mixed with defiance. Defiance to even the idea Robin could like Steve like that.
Which even Nancy had to admit was weird. She didn’t know quite how to explain her own feelings for Steve. She had been in awestruck infatuation when he first started going with her. The most popular guy at school asking her out? It was unheard of for Hawkins. She had really, really liked Steve at certain points over the years. If Barb hadn’t gone missing, she could have seen herself sliding into the ease of being with Steve indefinitely. It was like letting yourself slip down into a warm bubble bath. But eventually you grow pruny and the water turns cold. You become aware of the cold air stinging your skin. It was comforting but it wasn’t enough. The pain and guilt of Barb’s death drove an insurmountable wedge in being anything more than friends with Steve.
She shook her head and continued.
“No, I mean I know you are both adamant you are just friends. But neither of you have ever said why. I mean…” Nancy rolled her eyes as she thought back to being at Murray’s place. “To borrow something Murray, of all people, said to me and Jonathan: you are both young and attractive. Shared trauma. Plus you are basically peas in a pod. I mean you literally follow each other job to job.”
“I mean, maybe it was different with you because you had the air of mystery around King Steve. But I’ve had to work with him for hours upon hours. I’ve smelled his garlic breath after he ordered extra on his Sbarro slice and watched him try to snort ice cream once just to see if it gave him a sugar rush to get through the rest of his shift when he was hungover.” Robin shook her own head at the memory.
“My point is, the aura fades,” Robin continued. “Even with the hair which admittedly does stay perfectly messed up. I get why babes dig the hair. But to your question…have you ever really gotten that vibe from me and Steve? Or is it possible…is it possible you are just projecting about your own feelings for him?” Robin asked. Nancy rolled her eyes.
“It is definitely not that. And once again I’m with Jonathan! I just…” Nancy thought back to how close Vickie had been standing to Robin earlier. About how she hadn’t been certain where one of Robin’s arms had been. Why did she think about that again all of a sudden? “Nevermind. It’s not important. I was just wondering.”
Robin looked at her in a way Nancy couldn’t stand. She could see that Robin was forming a judgment about her. And she couldn’t place what that judgment could be.
“Hm, but you did wince a little bit again when you mentioned Jonathan.” Robin was trying not to laugh at this point. Excellent, Nancy sarcastically thought. This was apparently now their special inside joke.
“Robin, being psychoanalyzed is not why I came here.”
“And why did you come here?” Robin said with a smirk and an arched eyebrow.
“I…think I need some girl time. That isn’t with my sister or mom. And that seems in short supply between us with how much girl time you share with Vickie these days.”
Robin nervously coughed and clapped her hands before standing up to grab a record from one of the shelves. “Okay fine. Let’s do ‘girl time’ as you call it. And let’s agree to not talk about anyone else we personally know from high school. We can listen to The Clash or Talking Heads or whatever you want to instead. Deal?”
“Literally anything but those two bands and that is a deal.” Nancy smiled up at Robin, and the surge of anxious energy Robin had shown at Nancy bringing up Vickie again seemed to fade as she genuinely smiled back at Nancy.
*
FALL 1987
They were about to fight Vecna and destroy the Upside Down once and for all, but Will insisted on sitting them all down to tell them something important.
When he finished talking, Nancy’s first instinct was of course to go to him and support him. But when he was talking she noticed Robin out of the corner of her eye. Robin hadn’t been surprised. She looked like she did when she and Nancy had raced away from Pennhurst Mental Hospital together. That day when Robin had caught her breath, she had turned to her with a smirk and said “pretty good huh Ruth?” while she worked to open the buttons of the collared shirt Nancy had forced on her. She had been so proud of herself.
She looked proud of Will and like she already knew what he was about to say.
Nancy had heard of gay people before of course. Unfortunately, mostly as a joke or something derogatory. But watching her brother’s friend in a nervous hysteria over the thought of them hating him over it…it was personal. Even in a small town like Hawkins there were gay people. And, it dawned on Nancy, what a hard life to experience.
She wondered if Jonathan had known. He had occasionally expressed worry about Will in the quiet of the night as they would lay in his bed together. Back when things between them weren’t strained beyond the breaking point. Before she had realized she liked and admired Jonathan but wasn’t really in love with him.
“What do you mean you worry about him?” She had asked.
“He’s just…he’s different from your brother and the others. More sensitive. Sometimes I think they hurt his feelings without even meaning to,” Jonathan had explained.
“Mike can be a little oblivious. Especially with him and El spending so much time together. Will is strong and he has you. He will get through it.” Nancy traced Jonathan’s jaw with a finger.
Back in the present, Nancy looked at Robin and could not shake the feeling she’d already known about Will being gay. She tried to process why Robin would have known.
Then Nancy glanced over at Robin’s desk, where she had startled her and Vickie months earlier. Vickie who now glanced at Robin with tears in her eyes even though she hardly knew Will. Why was Vickie even here with them all?
*
FALL 1987
They were in Vecna’s Abyss, or whatever Dustin had called it, and it was a long walk up to the hive mind. There was a lot of time to plead for guns, make jokes, and try not to devastate each other with giving final goodbyes just in case. Nancy nodded to Will and tilted her head to indicate he should come up to the front with her.
“This is the right way right? Not another trick?” Nancy asked. Will felt the back of his neck with his fingers and nodded.
“Yes, I’m sure of it.” Will answered somberly.
“That was incredibly brave what you did back there,” Nancy said, tilting her head in the vague direction of where they came from.
“Thank you Nancy. Thank you for everything.” Will said in a thick voice.
“I keep thinking back to one thing you said I didn’t understand though.” She noticed him flinch in response, so quickly continued. “You mentioned ‘your Tammy.. What did that mean?” Nancy made sure not to look directly at Will. The question was already direct enough. Will coughed awkwardly to clear his throat before speaking.
“Oh um…just something a friend had said about a crush they had similar to…mine I guess.”
“I see. So was this friend a girl? I mean Tammy is a girl’s name after all.”
“It…it really doesn’t matter. They've just helped me a lot. I don’t want to speak for someone else.” That was a bullseye as far as Nancy was concerned.
Nancy thought back to Robin’s morning show. She had listened almost every morning without fail because what else was there to do while trapped in a quarantine waiting for your real life to begin? One morning, Robin had declared she had a date later that day. But when Nancy asked her about it when they all met up, Robin had just gotten flustered and admitted she made it up for dramatic flair, and that she was happily single and thankful for it.
“Well I’m glad your friend was helpful to you.” Nancy said to Will.
If they made it out of here, she would plan to talk to Robin. And make sure Robin knew no matter what, they’d always be friends.