Chapter Text
Nancy parked her car in the school’s parking lot and hesitated before moving out of it. As much as she didn’t want to make a big deal out of it or pretend she was having some big cinematic moment, she had to let herself take in the moment. This was her very first day of senior year. Just one more year and then she would be, technically, free to move on and away from Hawkins if she wanted to, which she seriously did. It was a big year, and she had a lot of work, and a lot of things to look forward to. Still, somehow, the one thing she couldn’t stop thinking about was the summer that just ended. More specifically, all the unexpected and marvelous changes that took place during that summer. Even more specifically, Robin Buckley, the main cause of all those changes, the most exciting part about the future, and the person that knocked on Nancy’s window, startling her out of her thoughts.
“ Shit! ” Nancy cursed as she turned to her side in a haste.
She found Robin right there, looking down at her with a proud smirk on her lips at having taken her by surprise. Robin winked at her and even though the window was up, Nancy could almost hear her laugh. Just like that, Robin walked away. She left Nancy biting her lip and attentively watching her walk away. Such a tease, Nancy thought. Robin knew exactly what to do to have Nancy trailing after her the entire day. But it was, if she was being honest with herself, the perfect start to their day. They had agreed to be subtle and let their public friendship grow gradually throughout the first days at school. They wouldn’t avoid each other, but there was no need to scandalize their friends and social circles by suddenly showing up to school hand in hand, right? The high school ecosystem remained a fragile and dangerous thing.
Well. Unsurprisingly, keeping her distance from Robin was turning out to be much more difficult than expected. It was something Nancy had some experience with. This time they were trapped working side by side in a small space for hours on end, but the bigger space and distractions only made Nancy crave Robin even more. She looked for her in every hallway and every classroom. She spent the entire morning looking over her shoulder, scanning the crowds, feeling her heart skip a beat every time she finally managed to spot Robin. Sometimes Nancy would see her first and get a few seconds of luxury to stare at Robin’s beautiful profile from afar. Without fail, Robin turned toward her at the right time and met her eyes. Some other times, when Nancy turned around to look for Robin, she’d catch Robin already looking at her. In every case, Robin might give her a timid smile, or a breathtaking grin, she might blush at being caught staring or she might wink or roll her eyes playfully at Nancy. Without fail, every time they found each other across one classroom or busy hallway, Nancy would her chest fill with familiar warmth, her stomach crowd with butterflies, and her smile unstoppably take over her face.
Finally, they coincided in one of their classes. Nancy was already sitting down when Robin entered the room. Nancy knew there was no way she would successfully avoid staring at Robin, so instead, she tried to concentrate all her efforts on not smiling like a lovesick fool.
“Wheeler,” Robin said as a greeting when she passed. Apparently, she didn’t think fully ignoring each other was possible either.
“Buckley,” Nancy answered, as coldly as possible, which wasn’t much. She did try not to smile, but when she looked up and caught Robin’s sparkling blue eyes, well, it was difficult to keep track of the emotions that showed on her face.
Robin couldn’t stop beside her, and she physically couldn’t walk any slower to prolong their brief interaction, so she moved on, leaving Nancy with a giddy feeling in her heart and already an ache to see her again. Just when Nancy thought she was going to yield to the pressure of her own heart and look over her shoulder to find Robin again, someone else talked to her.
“Since when are you friends with Robin Buckley,” Fred said. He was a harmless guy that had joined the school’s newspaper and Nancy saw him as someone that could become a good friend in the future.
“We worked together the entire summer,” Nancy explained, and added a shrug for good measure. She was satisfied with her answer. Surely nobody could infer that what she really meant was that she’d fallen head over heels in love with Robin.
“I would hate whoever I was forced to spend an entire summer with,” Fred chuckled and looked away from Nancy, ready to move on to a different topic.
However, Nancy couldn’t keep herself from chuckling and saying, “Trust me, I tried . Let’s just say it didn’t work.” She had to make a strong effort to keep herself from gushing about Robin.
Fred glanced at her again, looking a little confused, a little disinterested in the subject, but he couldn’t have missed Nancy’s unusual little smile. ”Good for you, Nancy,” he said.
Oh, you have no idea how good , Nancy thought. Fortunately, she didn’t say anything like that out loud. She simply smiled at him and both of them moved on to focus on the class. Mostly. Partially focus on the class. Well, Nancy tried to pay attention to the class but Robin was still there, in the back of the classroom, and always in the back of her mind.
That first day at school was a strange combination of a quick blur and the longest fucking day of Robin’s life. It wasn’t difficult to understand actually. It was just the result of not being able to care or focus on anything other than trying to find Nancy at all times. This could drive a person crazy, Robin thought, as if she wasn’t already crazy about Nancy. Happily crazy, she might add.
She was in the process of further losing her mind in one of the school’s hallways, putting things hastily into her locker so she could go back to her regular scheduled longing stares across the endless hallway to the spot where she could see Nancy glancing back at her with a shy smile every few seconds. Robin was taking so long by her locker because she was so distracted by Nancy that her hands were shaking and she continued to drop things and pick the wrong books and just generally make a mess. It didn’t help that she had no idea what she would do when she was finally done with her locker. Just stare at Nancy for longer than one second? Walk past her just to say hello even though her next class was in the complete opposite direction? Actually walk up to her to have a completely casual short conversation that nobody could suspect was as close to a bold declaration of love as they could get under their current circumstances? Pull her into the middle of the hallways and kiss her senseless in front of all their peers?
Robin’s erratic thoughts were put to a sudden halt when someone crashed against her shoulder as they walked past her.
“Hey!” Robin exclaimed, turning around with a frown.
“What?” Max replied, holding up her head and smiling mischievously.
“Max!” Robin said, genuinely happy to see the other girl. But then she shoved Max’s shoulder, because she earned that. “You look older,” she added.
Max rolled her eyes at the, admittedly, not-very-good joke. “And you were looking like a lost puppy,” Max retorted and nodded her head in the general direction of where Nancy was.
“Shut up,” Robin scoffed loudly. “Go find El.”
Max just walked away, holding back a smile and holding up her middle finger for Robin, who rolled her eyes at her. This was the closest thing she ever had to a younger sister, and she didn’t appreciate that in this case, the younger sister seemed to be the one bullying her, but she’d take it. She understood what that brief and slightly hostile interaction meant. Max had spotted her in the hallway and willingly made her way to her. She was checking in with Robin. And Robin knew her well enough to gather by Max's completely normal behavior that she was letting her know she was okay. Robin exhaled a relieved sigh and turned around.
Of course she was startled once again.
“ Jesus Christ! Nancy!” Robin exclaimed, putting the palm of her hand over her heart, which continued to race even after the surprise was over. It was just the way her body reacted to seeing Nancy in close proximity.
“Hi Robin,” Nancy said. It was very simple, perfectly polite, and so absurdly fake that Robin nearly burst out laughing right there in the middle of the busy hallway.
“Uh, how’s your, um, first day going?” Robin asked, trying to keep a decent smile instead of the knowing smirk pulling at her lips. At least she refrained from adding the word princess at the end of her question. It was quite a success, Robin thought, considering just how adorable Nancy looked, so put together and cute with her textbooks held tightly against her chest. She almost looked exactly like the priss Robin used to think she was. Knowing exactly what kind of brave, loving, strong, and absolutely wonderful girl was hiding underneath just made the image all the more fascinating. Plus, it was a little distracting.
“Very good. And you?” Nancy said.
But Robin was still halfway through fully appreciating Nancy’s outfit and makeup and her hands holding her books and-
“Robin?” Nancy insisted, sounding so amused.
“Yeah?” Robin said, finally focusing back on the conversation at hand.
“I’ll see you later, okay?” Nancy told her. She was still smiling knowingly. It was beautiful and also incredibly frustrating for Robin, who couldn’t kiss that smirk right off her lips at the moment. She’d have to make up for it later.
“Okay,” Robin answered. “Yeah, okay. Sure. Of course.”
“Bye, Robin,” Nancy said, and started to walk away.
“Yeah, bye,” Robin sighed heavily, realizing just how much of a mess she made of herself for Nancy on this occasion. She didn’t mind very much though.
Robin walked away too, repeatedly looking over her shoulder for Nancy, constantly running into several other people that did not take it with a smile like Max. Being in love with Nancy Wheeler might get her in trouble if she didn’t focus on walking like a normal person at the very least. Though, to be fair, she’d take the risk any day.
“This is not exactly what we agreed we’d do when we returned to school,” Nancy said.
“Are you complaining?” Robin whispered, with her lips ghosting the sensitive skin of Nancy’s neck. While she waited for an answer, she resumed her work of kissing Nancy’s neck with all the accumulated want of every hour they had spent away from each other.
“Not unless you stop doing that,” Nancy answered with a breathless little laugh. She tightened her grip on Robin, one hand on the back of her jacket, one hand tangled in her hair, keeping her place and encouraging her to keep going.
Nancy held back a moan when she felt Robin leave a careful, teasing bite near her shoulder, and at that exact moment, she heard the door of the bathroom open up loudly. They were hiding in one of the stalls, breaking God knows how many rules and messing up their plans of pretending to be friends at school, and they were suddenly seized by the very real fear of getting caught.
Nancy pushed Robin just enough to get her to stop kissing her neck. Robin looked a little too amused for Nancy’s comfort. Nancy sent Robin her most threatening look and put one finger to Robin’s lips, silently swearing to kill Robin if she said another word or tried anything else. They could hear two girls talking among themselves in the bathroom, probably just fixing their makeup in the mirror, they didn’t even use one of the other stalls. But then something awful happened.
Nancy watched almost in slow motion as Robin’s face scrunched up adorably. She blinked a few times, moved a little bit further away from Nancy, frowned… and then… she sneezed . It was sudden and unstoppable and all at once Robin and Nancy froze, staring at each other with matching expressions of complete and absolute dread.
“Bless you!” one of the other girls in the bathroom said.
“Uh, thank you!” Robin called out with a trembling voice.
A second later, the door closed, and Robin and Nancy were all alone again.
“Oh thank fucking God,” Robin exhaled, almost doubling over to regain her breathing after holding it for a while waiting to see if they were in danger.
Nancy waited for another second… and then she started laughing. She couldn’t help it, the entire situation was just so unbelievably funny to her. Her entire body was shaking as she laughed. She tried to cover her face and stop laughing, but then she heard Robin join in, and their relieved giggles just multiplied. They reached out for each other, stumbling against one another blindly as their laughter filled the small space around them. Then they pulled each other in for a kiss, and another and another, just getting interrupted by their own laughter. It couldn’t have been better.
Robin knew as well as anybody how goddamn challenging high school could be. Scratch that. It wasn’t just high school. She had struggled to fit in pretty much since kindergarten and every year since. When she took longer than most kids to grasp every new bit of knowledge, they made fun of her. When she ended up being better than the majority at every subject, they made fun of her. When she failed at sports, when she got too tall, when she showed no interest in boys, everything was a new weapon for her stupidly mean classmates. By the time she reached senior year in Hawkins High, Robin thought she had mastered the art of mostly going unnoticed without compromising too much of her personality and dignity. Trying something new could ruin that peace she’d fought so hard to achieve.
And yet.
Robin sat down at an empty table in the cafeteria, waiting for the worst. She should’ve stuck to the table of the band geeks, she should’ve skipped lunch altogether and hid somewhere, she should’ve asked Steve to pick her up from the school, she… She got her panicking thoughts interrupted by Vickie and Chrissy sitting down across from her.
Robin tried to mask her surprise. Vickie used to fit in with the band kids much better than she ever did. Chrissy broke up with the basketball team captain over the summer, fortunately, but she remained the cheerleaders’ captain. Both of them had perfectly acceptable groups of friends where they would fit in without trouble, and still they were sitting there with Robin. They were choosing her, they were choosing the friendship they cultivated throughout the summer over everything else. It was starting to look like a group of friends unlike Robin ever had. But that, obviously, wasn’t everything. There was one very important piece missing. Robin got distracted at the very beginning of whatever conversation Vickie and Chrissy were having when she spotted Nancy entering the cafeteria.
An entire summer working no more than a few feet away from Nancy and still Robin felt more affected than ever with this entire big room between them. Her heart skipped a beat when she saw Nancy. She couldn’t get her eyes to look anywhere other than every step Nancy took. Not that she even wanted to look away. Nancy was a delight to watch. Nancy moved confidently, with her shoulders pushed back and her head held high and it was the furthest thing away from arrogance. Robin knew now that Nancy’s confidence didn’t come from social status or anything like it. She genuinely didn’t fear anyone in that room, she had nothing to prove, and she didn’t care anymore about what others thought about her at that moment. She passed by Max and El, who were walking side by side toward a table, and she smiled encouragingly at the girls. Nancy didn’t notice the way both girls looked over their shoulders once they passed Nancy just to see her again. They admired her, and Robin didn’t blame them. Nancy’s next stop was by one of the messiest tables, where a few familiar faces were discussing some game she didn’t understand. Nancy greeted Dustin, Lucas, and Will, and she affectionately ruffled Mike’s hair as she passed by. The boys stared at her leaving and she continued walking with a sweet smile on her lips.
Robin knew she was staring, but how could she not? Nancy was running out of tables where to sit. Surely she would turn around at any moment. She would probably sit with other smart kids, or kids from the school’s paper, or she would just leave or…
“Robin,” Nancy said softly as a greeting when she reached Robin’s table. She was smiling down at Robin, who suddenly had a little trouble breathing.
“Nancy,” Robin replied. She didn’t trust her voice to say anything else. Was this really happening? Was this her life now? Sitting with Nancy Wheeler during lunch? They hadn’t planned this but Nancy was still standing there next to Robin without running away.
“Are you going to let me sit here or not?” Nancy asked her.
Oh , Robin knew that tone. She spent all her summer going toe to toe with Nancy’s teasing. This was familiar territory.
“I’d rather not, actually,” Robin replied with a grimace, and she felt her heart swell in her chest when she saw Nancy roll her eyes like she always did. Laughing, Robin finally moved to her side to open up space for Nancy to sit down beside her. “You’re welcome, princess,” Robin whispered as best as she could, discreetly leaning closer to Nancy while the two of them shifted in the seats to get comfortable.
Robin watched entranced as Nancy blushed and then tried to focus her attention on saying hello to Vickie and Chrissy. Then they were all swept into a new conversation that came to them as easily as breathing. Just like that, it was settled. Robin knew that this exact dynamic would last them the entire last year of high school, and hopefully beyond that. She couldn’t have been happier with this turn of events.
Nancy walked out of school after her first day of senior year with a spring in her step. She couldn’t remember ever feeling like this in all of high school. There were good moments of course. There were moments of academic success, her friendship with Barb before she moved away, and even the beginning of her relationship with Steve. Nothing could compare to her feelings that day. She felt in her chest the firm belief that it was going to be a really good year and, most importantly, that it went so far and beyond high school. She felt good about life , in general, about her present and her future, the person she was and the person she would turn out to be. It was exhilarating, to say the least. Although she owed it to herself to take the credit for her own personal growth, and recognize the support of quite a few people in her life, from her mom to her brother, and including new friends, there was a very special person that was largely responsible for the recent improvements in her life. Nancy wanted to believe that, sooner or later, she would have disposed of her fears and insecurities and discovered her potential and the parts of herself that she encountered that summer by herself. But nothing could’ve compared to the adventure, the joy, and the excitement of going through that period of change with Robin Buckley. Of course there were ups and downs, but now that she was standing at the end of that chapter, she wouldn’t have traded any of it for the world. She only looked forward to what was next for both of them.
Nancy reached the parking lot of the school right in time to see Robin waving goodbye to Vickie. Nancy approached her slowly and when she was close enough but before Robin had noticed her, she said, “You’re looking a little lost, Buckley.”
“Nancy!” Robin exclaimed with a smile and turned around quickly to face her.
Robin closed the distance between them and halted her movement and shifted on her feet, adorably hesitating to show any great displays of affection like she was dying to do. Nancy knew this because she was struggling just as much to keep herself from throwing her arms around Robin.
Robin scratched the back of her head and said, “I’m, uh… Well, Steve said he would pick me up and it’s kind of weird that he’s not on time and it’s not like I'm worried, I’m perfectly fine, and I can totally wait for him, but I’m just… Why are you smiling like that?”
“It’s okay,” Nancy shrugged, downplaying how endeared she was by Robin’s nervous rant, “I’m sure he had something extremely important to do.”
She was proud to see that Robin could see straight through her act.
“Did you do something?” Robin asked her, narrowing her eyes at Nancy and starting to smile a little.
“I didn’t do anything,” Nancy replied and held up her hands in false innocence.
“Nancy Wheeler,” Robin said her name slowly, shaking her head and smirking at Nancy, who swooned at the sight.
Nancy chuckled, and finally asked her, “Robin, do you need a ride?” She was sure she wasn’t fooling Robin. She probably wouldn’t have fooled anyone curious enough to watch their interaction. It was obvious she had asked Steve to not show up to pick Robin up on their first day at school so she could do this.
“Please,” Robin answered, going along with Nancy and smiling the entire time.
If there were any eyes on them, if any old friends or foolish social circles or any person that cared way too much about social status in high school stared at them, neither of them cared. People could raise their eyebrows, frown, start new rumors, and do whatever they wanted, it wouldn’t change anything. Nancy fought the most difficult battle against herself that summer and came out victorious. She got the girl. She did try to fight that same girl too, but the important part was that they ended up together. After such an intense beginning, it would take so much more than high school social status to pull her and Robin apart. In fact, Nancy would go as far as saying that nothing could break them apart now.
They got inside Nancy’s car with a pleased sigh and stared at each other for a moment. “Are you ready?” Nancy asked.
“I’m ready if you are, Nance,” Robin answered with a lovely smile.
Nancy started the car and drove them away from school. She looked forward to spending the rest of her day with Robin. Well, she looked forward to spending the rest of her year with Robin. Hopefully even more.
Of course it was Robin the one to break the silence. She was looking at Nancy and trying to hold back a mischievous smile.
“So, I don’t know about you, baby. But I still need to save money to get out of Hawkins as soon as I graduate,” Robin said.
Nancy hummed in acknowledgment. She knew from Robin’s tone that her girlfriend wasn’t expecting an answer. Robin was just teasing her, building up anticipation for whatever she really wanted to say. Nancy briefly looked at her, and saw every little bit of love she felt for Robin returned in equal measure to her in Robin’s eyes.
“Well,” Robin cleared her throat, “I heard they’re hiring at Family Video.”
“Really?” Nancy chuckled.
“Oh yeah,” Robin continued talking with a playful tone. “They might pay even better than Scoops Ahoy.”
“Interesting,” Nancy nodded and stopped trying to hold back her smile for Robin. “Tell me more.”