Carry a Watermelon

She gets a scoff but the tissue disappears, and Nancy says, eyes steady on the road again, “I’m not gloating.” 

And she’s not. She’s really not. She’s just…

“You absolutely are.” 

Nancy lifts a shoulder noncommittally. “Okay.” 

It has the intended effect. 

“Oh my god. Okay. You were right. You were right about the leaves. I am sorry that I suggested that I would not enjoy looking at leaves.” 

She had suggested it. Several times. With a lot of confidence. 

“Nance. I know we hit 30 but like…this is a bit much. Leaves? In New Hampshire? Should we go to the bingo hall next week? Maria’s grandmother is there every Wednesday.” 

“They did have trees in Massachusetts, you know.  A lot of them, actually.  But I guess New Hampshire leaves are different.” 

Nancy had known Robin would like it, and not just because they had a cabin to themselves and a long weekend. Nancy had been right. 

She can feel Robin’s eyes on her, but she does not meet them.  She does, however, let her lips twitch again. Three tissues this time, pulled freshly from the box, crumpled and aimed high enough to make their point but low enough not to get in Nancy’s face. The mountain roads are winding and it’s getting dark and Nancy appreciates the intentionality even as she says, “I can give you some tips.” A beat.  “To help with your aim.” 

 Three more tissues and Nancy’s smiling outright, not bothering to hide it.  

“You’re having such a great day.” 

It’s true, and she lets it be true.  “I really am.” 

Robin’s hand spreads over her thigh, warm and familiar. 

“Me too.” 

It is quiet again, peaceful and good and then Nancy cannot help herself, because she is having such a great day and Robin is right there and it’s so easy. 

“Glad to hear it.  I was worried.  What with all the crying.” 

The hand disappears and Nancy doesn’t need to look to know it’s now tucked under Robin’s arm, the scowl on her face almost the same as it was more than a decade ago in Hawkins, the attitude performative and the face sharper, small lines now showing at the corners of her eyes.  Signs of their age.  

Familiar waves of gratitude and a brief sharp tug of grief pull at her, and she lets them for a second, because it’s good, she has begrudgingly realized, but then she shakes it off, because it’s good, too, to be exactly where she is. 

“You good?” 

She squeezes the hand that has appeared on her leg again and nods and Robin takes her at her word, squeezing back before moving to reach into the snack bag.  She starts to hum as she opens the bag of gummy bears, offering it to Nancy, who takes one as Robin turns on the radio. 

It’s dark now, the colors of the New Hampshire leaves shifted into silhouette, and Nancy listens as Robin sings, tries her hardest to remember everything she can about that overlook: the gravel under her feet, the little girl in the blue jacket whose whisper kept shifting to an excited yell as her parents walked her back to their car, and Robin, somehow the only one left standing at the railing in her leather jacket.  Robin, whose eyes had traveled wonderingly over the reds and yellows of the leaves, the pinks and blues and whites mirrored on the lake as the sun drifted lower. Robin, who had stood quietly with Nancy until another car pulled up, others hoping to catch the very last of the light.  

When they were back in the car, when the moment was well and truly broken, Nancy had silently reached into the back seat for the box of tissues, and Robin had realized, shoulders stiffening, exactly how much crow she would need to eat. 

Nancy will enjoy that memory, too, she’s sure.  

—

“Have you ever used a strap?”

Robin’s panting, sprawled naked on Nancy’s bed, and the question is enough to tear her eyes away from Robin’s tits, which is saying something. She pops the fingers she’d been sucking clean from her mouth, mourning a little as she wipes them on the sheets so that she can answer.

“No.” Settling back on her heels, admiring, Nancy fights back the desire to put her mouth to other uses. Later. Later. For now, she forces herself to pay attention to the conversation Robin started, one she’s interested in and that brings a very excellent set of images to the front of her mind. “Have you?”

“Yeah,” Robin presses up on her elbows to look at her. Nancy works very hard not to lose focus. “I mean, I don’t have one. I didn’t, uh, I didn’t want to lie if anyone I brought home asked, and there were certain expectations, or whatever, of me.”

She’s got the vaguely apologetic look she gets when she thinks she’s disappointing someone that matters. It’s not Nancy, but a ghost, and Nancy, not for the first time, feels protective rage bubble in her stomach. She soothes it by running her hands up Robin’s thighs, kissing her way up her body. She ends with a kiss on her nose, Robin’s eyes so, so soft as she takes Nancy in, touches her knuckles to her cheek.

“I love you.”

It still makes Nancy swoon, those words in that rasp not from her friend but her girlfriend.

“I love you, too.”

She settles against the headboard and Robin scoots down, making herself comfortable on the pillow Nancy places in her lap. She’s still got her shorts on, her camisole, too, because it’s a day where she’s feeling particular about how she wants. Which is to say she’d jumped Robin as soon as they’d made it into her apartment, but she’d gently removed Robin’s hands from under her shirt when she’d tried to reciprocate. Robin had only kissed Nancy’s palms and put them back on her own already naked body like it was nothing. Nancy runs her fingers through her hair and loves her.

“I liked it,” Robin says, eyes fluttering closed at the scratch of Nancy’s fingers. “When I took it, I mean. And when I wore it, with the right people.”

Neither of them really dated especially seriously after Hawkins, but there were good people who were around for a few weeks or just for a night. Nancy’s grateful for them, in her own life and in Robin’s, especially in conversations like this. She knows the right people were often, though not always, other butches, who didn’t expect Robin to be one thing. Who wanted to make her feel good exactly the way she wanted and helped her figure out what that was.

Nancy’s got that privilege now.

“You think you’d like to try it with me?” She knows her own answer, can barely stop from clenching her thighs at the thought of Robin underneath her taking a strap, Robin on her hands and knees crying out for more. She might like riding a dick if it were Robin’s, if she could watch Robin watch her come, big blue eyes wide and hands on Nancy’s hips. She would at least like to try.

Robin squirms, and Nancy’s grin turns predatory, but she bites her tongue and waits for the answer. She’s not disappointed, the yeah that Robin breathes out is needy and halfway gone, her eyes still closed. Nancy’s hand wanders from her hair to her chest, squeezing as she thumbs a nipple.

“Tell me what you’re thinking about.”

Robin groans and moves fully onto her back, blinking her eyes open briefly to stare at Nancy before they slam shut again, a cry escaping as Nancy’s fingers move. “Nancy,” she whines, and Nancy hums.

“Yeah, Robbie? Need me to fuck you?”

She nods rapidly, back arching up for more contact, and Nancy gives it, brings her second hand to pull and tug until Robin’s hips are moving hopefully into the air.

“Touch yourself,” she orders, and Robin whimpers even as she complies, but Nancy shushes her. “Soon, baby. Promise.” She bites her lip, tries it. “Just want to hear about how you want my cock, first.”

“Oh my god.” It’s pained. “Oh my god, Nance.” Her hips are moving more now, almost frantic against her finger where it rubs her clit.

“Yeah?” She’d liked it, felt a pleasant ache in her own body at the word, at the thought of fucking Robin with something that was hers, that was her, but she hadn’t been sure how Robin would feel.

“Yeah. Yes. Holy shit.”

Nancy pinches roughly, hums happily at the moan she gets. “Tell me.”

Robin stares up at her, body rolling in pleasure. “Want you to fill me up,” she says, her voice low and broken. “Want you to…” She bites her lower lip and Nancy brings a hand to run through her hair again, gentle. “Want you to use me,” she says after a moment, and Nancy tugs hard, shifting right back into it. Robin’s response is loud pleasure, and her hand has slowed, which means she must be trying not to come.

“Good girl,” Nancy offers, and Robin looks dazed. “You’ll feel so good around me. Wonder if I can come while I fuck you.” It’s an almost idle thought, one that drags a pleading sound from Robin.

“Please. Please. Make yourself come.”

“Sweet girl.” Her fingers move back to her breast, and Robin sighs her approval, eyes slipping closed again.

“I can help.” She’s drifting, caught in her pleasure, her hand now moving at an almost leisurely pace between her legs, and it’s one of Nancy’s favorite things to watch, when she lets go like this. “Wanna help. Want it so bad. Want to…” Her eyes flutter open as her hand moves, tugging at Nancy’s wrist and lifting her to her mouth. She bites at the tip of Nancy’s middle finger softly and then adjusts so that she can suck it into her mouth, moaning.

Robin had told her the first time they fucked that she liked penetration, and she’d quickly come to understand that what Robin had meant was that she likes to be full. She likes Nancy’s fingers stretching her open, and she likes them in her mouth, pressing against her tongue and fucking her there, too.

Nancy’s hands are small, but Robin sometimes likes it rough, begs for it, and with two or three fingers pressing back, she can choke. The first time, Nancy had pulled them out, horrified, but Robin had met her eyes and said, voice a little broken and tears pooling, I want it. I like it. I promise, Nance. I’ll tap you if I need to stop. She hadn’t needed to stop, coming hard around three of Nancy’s fingers as she sucked eagerly on three more, and Nancy had come barely a minute later, those same fingers shoved into her own underwear as Robin whimpered and clenched around her.

Now, as Nancy watches her, she imagines what it would be like to put her strap in Robin’s mouth, to hold the back of her head and feel her move. Like she can sense it, Robin looks at her and hollows her cheeks, sucking hard. Nancy bucks her hips on instinct, and Robin groans around her, drags her tongue up and over the pads of her fingers before slipping them free.

“Want to suck your cock, Nance. Feel you come in my mouth.”

“Jesus.” The thought of it, of Robin working hard to make her come, mouth on Nancy’s cock and fingers on her clit under the harness, her needy, broken sounds and gasps, the shag of her hair between Nancy’s grasping fingers—it halts Nancy’s breath for a second. It’s too much. She needs more. “Come here, baby.”

Robin scrambles up, straddling Nancy’s thighs, and Nancy’s kissing at her skin, sucking a nipple into her mouth as she presses into her with two fingers.

“Nancy!” She’s loud and ready and Nancy devotes herself to making her come apart again.

-

A few weeks later, they find their regular table taken and end up taking two seats at the bar. It’s not Mel who serves them but someone new, Alex, whose navy short-sleeve button-down is open over a white tank top, the front of which is tucked into a thick, worn black leather belt. She’s tall, at least as tall as Robin, and she has an easy smile and seems unbothered by the crowd, uncharacteristic for a Thursday. Tattoos of birds and flowers appear and disappear as she reaches under the bar for glasses or over it for liquor, her arms thicker than either of theirs in a way that makes Nancy want to use her teeth.

“Holy shit,” Robin whispers when Alex moves down the bar to get their orders and take a few more.

Nancy laughs. Her hand rests on Robin’s thigh, Robin’s arm around the back of her stool, and she leans closer, just because she can.

Robin looks down to meet her gaze, cheeks a little pink, and Nancy’s not jealous, not really, but it does spark something in her, to see Robin flustered by someone else, even someone who also has her flustered, or as close as she gets to it anyway. She raises a teasing eyebrow and Robin’s flush deepens.

“Got a crush, baby?”

Robin’s snort is immediate. “Yeah. You. For about four years now.”

With a look around to confirm it’s a family situation, Nancy places a lingering kiss on the spot just below her ear, the flash of strangely unpleasant heat in her stomach cooling rapidly at the sincerity in Robin’s voice and the somewhat lost look in her eyes when Nancy pulls away.

“Lucky me.”

“Lucky me,” Robin says, with some force and the awed tone she saves for the things she loves most. Nancy kisses her again, a gentle thing against her red cheek.

“Cute,” Alex says from across the bar, sitting Robin’s beer and Nancy’s gin and tonic in front of them with a smile. “Let me know if you need anything.” With a nod to the rest of the bar she adds, “Apparently there’s a field hockey tournament starting tomorrow but the girls have a curfew. Should clear out soon.”

“Thanks. I don’t think I realized field hockey was this queer.” It’s her no-nonsense voice, the one that keeps eyes on her, and she didn’t even mean to use it, but she’s inordinately pleased when Alex laughs before she has to go serve one of the very loud girls down the bar. It’s too much to hope Robin didn’t notice.

Sure enough, Robin’s breath is hot on Nancy’s skin as she asks, teasing, “Nancy Wheeler. Do you have a crush?”

“Yes,” she answers easily. “You. For about four years now.” The smile it gets her drowns out the scoff in her head that sounds suspiciously like Mike.

The field hockey teams do clear out, and the bar is left emptier than usual, most of the regulars apparently put off by the crowd. It means that their table is free. It also means that Alex is suddenly a lot less busy. Nancy and Robin stay at the bar.

Alex chats with them while she cleans glasses and checks stock, and they learn she’s new to town from St. Louis, that Mel is an ex of an ex turned friend who got her the gig, that her dog’s name is Mikey and the kebab spot below her apartment is so good it’s become a problem for her.

At one point, she declines to serve someone who has clearly had more than enough. It could easily turn into a mess, but Alex navigates the girl and calls a cab with a level of firm confidence that has Nancy thinking oh. It’s familiar, and she’s had enough to drink that her mind jumps without any hesitation to thoughts of Robin blinking up at her. Except it’s not just her. It’s her and Alex and oh.

That’s interesting.

It floats in her mind for a bit as Robin and Alex talk about music. It’s hot to think about—Alex in her tank and tight jeans, belt buckle glinting as she stands next to Nancy, Robin waiting for them on the bed or on her knees—and she tries out the shape of it, of the want and the way it might look for it to be more than just the two of them. Would she watch? Touch? Talk?

It’s all hypothetical, all abstract, no guarantee Alex would be interested in any of it, even if she has been lightly flirting with Robin since it became clear Nancy found it amusing and not threatening. The thought of it, while vaguely hot, is not quite right, and Nancy finds it easy enough to let it go when she realizes that, erasing Alex in favor of the two of them, a pleasant throb building between her legs.

She snaps back into the conversation as Alex says, “Right next to that sex shop in Andersonville. Show’s next Thursday.”

“Oh,” Robin says, cheeks perpetually red after her third beer. “I don’t know it. The sex shop, I mean.”

“Oh!” Alex grabs a napkin and the pen from behind her ear, scribbles down an address and slides it over to them before grimacing, running a sheepish hand through her hair. Nancy watches the blue jay on her tricep. “Shit, sorry. Probably should’ve checked to see if you actually wanted that.”

“No, it’s totally good.” Robin’s nodding as Nancy folds the napkin and tucks it into her bag. “Actually we’ve been meaning to go to one anyway. So, like, perfect. Recommended. Even better.”

Nancy rolls her eyes and grins affectionately at filterless Robin. It’s more than she’d share with a stranger normally, but this is a stranger she’s spent most of the night thinking about fucking. Or about fucking Robin. And it soothes the least secure parts of herself, to have Robin rambling vaguely about their sex life, their real one.

Alex seems unfazed, nodding along with Robin as she wipes a glass.

“It’s in a basement because where else would it be, so don’t think you’re in the wrong place if you go. My girlfriend’s roommate’s ex works there. Super cool.”

“Super cool,” Robin echoes and Nancy eyes the last of her favorite lightweight’s fourth beer. On cue, Robin yawns, and Nancy rubs her hand up and down her thigh gently.

“Ready to go, baby?”

“Yeah.” Robin smiles at her, and Alex is working on their bill before she even asks. Nancy tips well (she always does) and Alex salutes them as they head out.

“You were definitely thinking about fucking Alex,” Robin says confidently into the dark of her bedroom, Nancy’s head resting on her chest.

Nancy pokes her ribs lightly. “Actually,” she corrects. “I was thinking about Alex and I fucking you.”

“Oh.”

“Mmhmm.” She splays her hand out, asks more gently, “Is that okay? Does that bother you?”

“No. It-it definitely doesn’t bother me. Promise.” Nancy kisses her heart over her t-shirt and Robin runs her hand through her hair. “And, uh, how was that for you? The, uh, the thinking?”

She laughs and presses herself up, catches Robin’s eyes in the low yellow light from the window. “Fun for a minute. Not something I would actually want, I don’t think. Unless you would?”

She shakes her head immediately and with conviction. “No. I mean, she’s hot. Absolutely. Fun to think about for a second, totally get that. Did some, did some thinking myself there actually. But uh, turns out I’m a one girl kind of girl.”

Her lips are waxy against Nancy’s with the chapstick she wears to bed. “Yeah? I get to keep you for myself?”

“Yep.” She leans up for another kiss. “Nancy Wheeler’s girl. Put me in your letterman.”

Nancy laughs, traces her nose, thinks about her class ring and expectations, about how much is too much, thinks about someday and the irony of wanting only when she can’t have. She buries the sharp ache of limitation under the explosion of love. “I would if I had one. Might be a little small, though. You do have my Northwestern sweater.”

Robin’s eyes stray to her desk chair, where said sweater has been haphazardly tossed. It’s two sizes too big for Nancy, who bought it first semester freshman year purely for Robin to steal, which she did only after the third time Nancy pointedly forgot it at her dorm. Had to see you wear it enough for it to have been yours, she’d confessed to Nancy just after they started dating, and Nancy had kissed her breathless.

The cuffs of both sleeves are worn, and there’s a paint stain from an art assignment their sophomore year, a meandering white splatter that had made an underslept Robin so upset she’d cried. The thread at one armpit has been threatening to unspool for ages, and the collar is stretched, as Robin’s collars tend to be.

“I could get you a new one.”

“Don’t you dare,” Robin says, offended, and Nancy kisses her again.

“Understood.” She returns to her place on Robin’s chest.

“There’s something else you can get me. Or, well, something we can get each other, maybe.”

It’s the cant of her hips that gives her away, pulls Nancy again from someday and toward the napkin in her bag. Biting her lip, she moves her hand down to slip under Robin’s shirt, blunt nails scratching at her belly.

“Yeah, baby? Wanna take a field trip this weekend?”

Robin reaches for Nancy’s wrist and pulls it down, guides Nancy’s hand into her boxers. She’s soaked, coating Nancy’s fingers and her palm as Nancy slips inside with a moan. “Yeah,” Robin breathes shakily, bucking into Nancy’s thrusts greedily. “I really fucking do.”

-

The shop is in a basement, as promised, a white wrought iron door over dark pink wood that opens into a surprisingly large set of rooms separated only by half-walls and shelves. Mina, the girl at the register in the middle of the first and biggest room, introduces herself with a smile.

“Let me show you around,” she says, in a way that would normally annoy Nancy deeply, not so much a choice as a direction. For maybe the first time in her life, though, Nancy’s grateful to be directed and maneuvered through a store, feeling wildly out of her depth and embarrassingly intimidated.

Robin, on the other hand, is fascinated, eyes wandering the shelves and questions flowing freely. She makes Mina laugh, and Nancy settles into the comfort of their back and forth, trying not to become so tense that being in a sex shop with her girlfriend becomes a chore. She’s mostly successful, and the patient, constant motion of Robin’s thumb against her knuckles helps.

“So,” Mina says as they reach the back of the store, a wall full of leather suits and flogs and other things Nancy has never considered in her life, “Anything in particular I can help with?”

The harnesses are in the middle room, a line of toys on the shelves behind, and Nancy turns her head back toward them as Robin says, “We’re gonna look at the strap-ons. Anything special we should know?”

It’s the right question, even if it makes Nancy feel tight. They don’t know what they’re doing, and the whole point of this is to figure out what they like, and it’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay, she thinks to herself as Mina walks them back and then talks them through materials and sizing and points to the little curtain and inlet with a mirror, explaining their process for trying things out.

Her eyes catch on the wall, on the range of leathers and other materials, and then they wander to the dildos, ranging in size from barely more than a finger to big enough that it makes Nancy ache just to see. There’s a deep blue one in the middle, bigger than what Nancy would like but probably exactly right for Robin, and it’s enough, the thought of it, to take her out of her discomfort, to make her imagine Robin crying out, Robin begging, Robin coming around it, around Nancy, and…

“What do you think?” Robin asks, tugging her toward the wall of harnesses and reaching out to feel the black leather closest to them, shiny and stiff.

“Something softer,” Nancy says on instinct, and Robin nods easily.

“Totally, yeah.”

Nancy wants her. Nancy wants this. And she can have it.

She looks at the wall and starts evaluating. Categorizing. Karen Wheeler’s shopping skills put to use in ways Nancy’s entirely certain she never could’ve imagined.

“More like this,” she says, soft brown bending under her fingertips, and she doesn’t tune out when Mina steps up to offer her thoughts.

Fifteen minutes later, Robin drops to her knees unceremoniously to examine the harness, a running stream of conversation flowing from her like she hasn’t just pushed Nancy toward an early grave.

She must know what she’s doing. She must know. But as Nancy watches, sees her furrowed brow as she tightens one strap and examines another, listens as she chats with Mina about the show Alex mentioned, she thinks Robin might genuinely not know. She makes the mistake of looking in the mirror and nearly loses her mind because holy shit.

There’s Robin, on her knees for Nancy, Nancy’s strap jutting from her hips in a still foreign but not unnatural way. It’s easy, to imagine Robin’s head moving just to the left, her lips trailing up the silicone, her tongue licking at the head. Easy, too easy, to imagine her moaning as she opens for Nancy and swallows her down.

Fuck. Fuck.

One of the fluorescent lights flickers and Nancy remembers exactly where they are, pulls her mind as hard as she can toward decency and painfully brings her eyes up from the back of Robin’s head.

She catches Mina’s amused eye in the glass, can see the panic, the wild, frantic confusion and want in her own eyes, and Mina laughs once, sharp, before turning it into a cough so ridiculously theatrical that Robin pops her head around Nancy’s hip to check on her.

“You good?” She asks, confusion and concern mingling in her voice.

“Yep,” Mina says, a small, seeming real clearing of her throat later. “I’ll be right over there if you need me, yeah?”

“Thanks.” It’s a bit absent, her attention already back on the harness. “How’s this? I dunno if I’ve got it quite right, but it seems…”

She trails off as she sees Nancy’s eyes, and she finally, finally seems to notice where she is, face flushing immediately.

“Oh,” she manages, as Nancy manages to maintain her self control.

“Yeah, oh,” Nancy nearly hisses, fists flexing at her side.

“Oh.” And there’s a smirk now, wide and confident, her thumb running along the leather that rests just under Nancy’s belly button, her lower lip catching in her teeth.

“Robin,” Nancy warns, pleads.

“Don’t worry, Nance,” she rasps, a near whisper, blinking up at Nancy from below suddenly hooded eyes. “I’ll take care of you.”

It takes every ounce of Nancy’s considerable self-restraint to stop her hips from bucking. Robin, determined to put her to the test, peeks around Nancy’s hips again and, apparently satisfied with what she doesn’t see, grips the strap in her hand, loose enough to move without lube and tight enough to produce the desired effect when she moves her fist up and down once, twice, coming to rest at the bottom and pressing in just so.

“You feel so good.” Her voice is wanting, and Nancy barely manages not to whimper, feels absolutely desperate. “Gonna make you feel so good. I promise.” Blinking up at Nancy, she strokes once more and then lets go.

She stands, as always, like a newborn foal, and moves behind Nancy, examining her in the mirror and nodding in approval as she rests a hand on her waist. “How’s that?” She’s louder now, nonchalant, and Nancy is going to fuck her until she forgets her own name.

“Perfect,” she says, her own tone impressively normal, but her eyes are burning when she catches Robin’s in the mirror. Robin swallows, and Nancy thinks about sinking her teeth into her throat.

-

The walk back to the car is silent and quick, abnormal, but both of them know exactly why. Nancy’s palms are sweating, the discreet brown shopping bag in her hand feeling more like a Molotov than anything. Robin takes it from her before they get into the car, which is also silent.

As they leave the one-ways of the neighborhood, Robin rests her hand on Nancy’s thigh, and Nancy is afraid she might catch fire. “Tell me,” she says anyway, and Robin squeezes her fingers over Nancy’s jeans, digging into muscle.

“I swear to god, Nance, I was ten seconds from blowing you in that fucking basement.” Nancy spreads her legs the tiniest amount at the words, eyes on the road and conscious of what she’s doing, and by sheer force of will she stays quiet. She wants to listen. She wants to hear. Robin’s hand drifts up and down and just inside as she talks, torturous and incredible. “It’s so hot. You’re so hot. I didn’t even…I swear I wasn’t, like, trying anything when I got down there to fix the straps but the way you looked at me, holy shit. Holy shit, baby.”

Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Robin’s own legs spreading, hips moving like she can’t get comfortable.

“You looked so good,” Nancy says, because she has to, because Robin needs to know. “On your knees for me like that. I almost lost my mind, when I saw us in the mirror.”

Her hand comes to a stop dangerously high on Nancy’s thigh and stays there. Nancy spreads her legs the smallest amount more.

“Want you to lose your mind. Jesus, Nance. I really, really do.”

“Careful.” It’s half real, the warning, Robin’s pinky drifting with intent, and she stops it with a sigh, turns her body in the seat so that she’s angled toward Nancy. She doesn’t let herself look. Can’t let herself look.

“I don’t want to be careful.” It’s low and hoarse. “That is actually the very last thing I want.” Her pinky inches higher again, playing at the seam of Nancy’s jeans. “I’d suck you right here, you know. If you were wearing the strap.”

Nancy’s fingers tighten on the wheel. Ten and two. She checks the rearview and does not move her hips.

“Would you like that?” Her finger moves, teasing. “You were so hard, Nance.”

And that’s something she never knew she wanted to hear, but god, does she want to hear it again. “For you,” she says, with confidence she didn’t know she felt until that moment. Robin whimpers.

“I’d make you feel better. I’d make you feel so good. Promise, baby. You could come anywhere you wanted. My mouth. My hands. My pussy. Yours. Let me show you.”

Nancy’s mind lights up with possibility, and she can’t stop the tilt of her hips this time. She does stop Robin, though, as painful as it is, catches her wrist before her hand can press fully against Nancy through her jeans. “I’ve got to get us home.”

“Yeah. Yeah. Totally,” Robin says, but she bites her lip in the way that means she’s about to further fuck with Nancy’s sanity. “And, uh, if I were to touch myself until we got there, that would be…bad?”

Nancy groans and laughs. “You’re gonna get us pulled over with a bag of sex toys in the car.”

Robin laughs, and Nancy turns just enough to catch her sheepish grin. “Sorry.”

“Don’t be,” Nancy says. She risks a look, catches Robin’s eye and smiles, lets it sharpen, feels her shoulders relax at the way Robin looks at her and sees. “Touch yourself for me,” she orders with lazy self-assurance, feeling her stomach burn with the knowledge that Robin will listen, that Robin wants to listen. “We’ve got about ten minutes. The blanket’s in the back seat.”

In seconds, the seatbelt clicks and clicks back again, a thin navy blanket they use for studying in the park spread over Robin’s legs. It’s too hot for it, really, fall still a few weeks off, but Robin doesn’t seem to care.

“So good for me,” Nancy murmurs as she flicks her blinker on.

“Yeah,” Robin confirms, one hand slipping under the blanket. The shuffle of clothing and the quick snip of a zipper and then Robin’s sighing loudly, happily, sinking into the seat as she turns her head to watch Nancy. “Wet for you, too.”

Nancy’s gasoline, lighter fluid, whatever back alley bonfire mixture her dumbass brother and his friends made three Halloweens ago that nearly blew up Steve’s pool. She doesn’t let the match light. Not yet. “You can go inside but don’t use more than one finger.”

The nod she receives in response is eager, and she reaches a hand over to cup Robin’s cheek and feel it, gets a kiss to her palm and her wrist. “Only one,” she repeats in a breath that catches at the end, lets Nancy know she’ll be begging for more soon.

The rush of it is still almost so much she can’t breathe, sometimes. Robin wants her so much and so vocally and so differently than she’s ever been wanted. Because it’s not just Nancy’s body, Nancy the way she is in the world. She’s attractive. She knows that, has been told that all her life by people who felt entitled to say so, has been asked to say thank you.

Robin thinks she’s beautiful, tells her so often and with the kind of sincerity that would’ve made Nancy as she was a few years ago mean and embarrassed with the vulnerability of it.

But Robin also sees her as herself. She sees Nancy struggle in her body, with her body, with connection and disconnection and what it means to live in something that other people decide has value or doesn’t. She sees Nancy decide how much of herself to show every day, how much is safe and what it might cost her—professionally, socially, otherwise—to adjust any of her carefully controlled self. Nancy finds herself intolerable sometimes, the calculations, the constant thought and evaluation of the rules and her own life. Fake, Jonathan had called her during their worst fight before the end. Curated. I don’t think you even know who you are, Nance. How am I supposed to know you?

He hadn’t been meant to know her. Even beyond the fact that she’s very much a homosexual, as it turns out, she hadn’t been ready to see herself, much less have someone else see her.

She still doesn’t know herself entirely. It’s part of the reason she keeps such tight control—how can she possibly let go when she doesn’t know what might happen? But she knows herself more, and Robin knows her, too.

Robin knows her, and unlike Nancy, Robin treats her gently, asks and listens and watches and tries and adjusts and tries again, studies like Nancy is another language she’s learning, something fascinating and rich and worth her time. It’s the highest compliment Nancy has ever received. It makes her want to cry. It makes her feel like she can exhale. It makes her want to show Robin how loved she is, how much Nancy wants to see her and know her and give her everything.

“I love you,” she says into the car filled with the filthy sounds of Robin touching herself, the breathy noises and slick, wet slide of her.

“Maybe you can wear it to the drive-in sometime,” Robin says, casually, though there’s a shake to her voice. “I love you, too,” she adds and then takes the kind of breath that precipitates a ramble. Nancy bites her lip in delighted anticipation, even though she’s well aware whatever Robin says might destroy her.

“So much. And also, I really, really love your cock, turns out. I mean, we knew this in theory. But Jesus, Nance, just touching it was enough to make me so wet I’m doubting we’ll ever need that lube. And your face, baby. The way you carry it. It’s yours, you know?”

Nancy does know. She really knows, and…and it’s not at all like jumping into the upside-down— the feeling of rightness she got wearing the strap—except in the ways that it is. That sensations of something entirely unexpected but undeniably real, familiar and unfamiliar at the same time, old and new and terrifying. Except this had possibility, not death, at the root of it.

“It felt like I was touching you. I was touching you.” She shudders and sighs, adjusting her hips enough that Nancy can see it in her periphery, body as slumped as it can be into the well of the passenger side without losing her seatbelt. “God, I want to touch you. Which, yeah, I’m legitimately kind of regretting not just getting my mouth on you in the store because this drive is way more than ten minutes and I’m so desperate for it it’s embarrassing.”

The drive isn’t more than ten minutes but Nancy sympathizes. She feels like she’s been driving for five hours now. Time is often different with Robin.

“I’d have to wear your jeans. Or maybe steal some of Steve’s. And get some briefs. For the drive-in,” she clarifies, and Robin curses under her breath. “I like you desperate,” she adds conversationally, and smirks at the groan she gets in response.

“Yeah, I know you do.” Robin pulls her hand from her pants as they slow back into the tree-lined streets of Evanston, wiping her fingers on the blanket. “Sorry. I’ll bring it in for the wash. Trish is with Mavis, right?”

“Until Monday,” Nancy confirms.

“Good.” There’s nothing casual about the relief in it, and Nancy laughs, reaches over to lace their fingers and bring Robin’s hand to her mouth for a kiss.

“Good,” she agrees. “I’m going to fuck you until you tell me you can’t take any more.” She keeps her voice light as she makes the last left before her university apartment, pretends not to notice Robin staring at her and internally congratulates herself. “And I got chocolate chips and blueberries for pancakes.”

-

She’d taken the bag into the bathroom with a kiss to Robin’s cheek, wanting to get a better understanding of everything, to take a moment with herself.

Now, she stands in her underwear and tank top, brown leather buckled and tightened and deep blue silicone fitted into the ring at the center of the harness. She circles her fingers around it experimentally and presses it into herself. It feels good, the pressure not enough to make her come on its own, probably, but certainly enough to get her close.

It’s going to sit with her, the rightness of this, the same way it sat with her the first time she touched herself to the thought of a woman, the first time she let a woman touch her, the first time she let herself not want to be touched. She thinks things through, keeps them with her, gnaws on them until she understands. It’s why she’s a good journalist, obsessive and relentless in her research and investigations.

It’s different, of course, when it’s something like this. Nancy’s spent considerable time fighting her father at the dinner table, but she’s still a Wheeler, and Wheelers do not historically find self-examination to be a particularly useful or worthwhile endeavor. If anything, it’s understood that spending much time considering yourself is a bit vulgar, and a barrier to just getting on with things.

But Nancy has watched her parents and decided she wants to do more than just get on with things, wants to do more than settle. Nancy doesn’t want to spend her whole life looking away from the truth of herself. So this feeling, the way she sees herself in her and Trish’s bathroom, hand wrapped around the silicone dick she’s going to use to fuck her girlfriend senseless, the way she fills out her body when she lets it be a part of her—it’s going to sit with her, and she’s going to let it.

She gives herself one last stroke and then grabs the lube and heads to Robin.

Robin’s on the sofa, tucked into the corner, two untouched glasses of water on the little side table. Her eyes are already waiting when Nancy opens the door, and Nancy can see her physically holding herself back as she takes her in.

“Nancy,” she says softly. “Baby.”

“Come here,” Nancy says, and Robin nearly falls into the coffee table, she moves so fast.

Her hands are on Nancy’s waist, bunching the fabric of her tank, and her eyes are on Nancy’s, waiting for permission. It’s easy to give, a soft kiss and a nod, and then Robin’s sinking to her knees.

Her fingers wrap around the strap, an echo of the store, two strokes, three, a loose fist that tightens at the base to press into Nancy. Nancy’s shaking at the sight of her, totally undone, but Robin seems to be with her, pupils blown as she licks her lips.

She looks away from Nancy to stare at the strap, and Nancy can see that it’s about to happen, watches Robin’s head move forward, but when she kisses the tip, immediately opens her mouth to moan and lick at it, Nancy’s eyes slam shut and her head tilts back.

She wants nothing more than to watch. She can’t bring herself to open her eyes.

“Nance?” It’s the concern in her voice that brings Nancy back, and she tilts her head down and meets Robin’s eyes, reaches to trace the shell of her ear with a finger. “Too much?”

Nancy considers. “Maybe? But not…” It’s so good. Too good. That feeling, from before, except so much of it she can’t process. “I…it’s like I want it too much.” A light comes into Robin’s eyes, and she nods once, like maybe she understands. Maybe she does. Nancy loves her so much, and she feels so strange, her body coiled in new ways, and she doesn’t typically need reassurance like this, but, “You’re sure you want this?”

Robin turns her head to nuzzle into Nancy’s hand.

“Yes.” Nancy feels it as much as she hears it, the movement of Robin’s lips ghosting against her wrist. When she pulls back, she sits on her heels, shoulders squared, and the dynamic has shifted enough that Nancy feels a little off balance, Robin’s voice deeper, stronger. “I want this. I want you like this. Let me show you?”

Nancy nods, and Robin smiles, pressing up from her knees and taking Nancy’s hand, sitting her on the sofa. Her body folds back down in front of Nancy, and she puts the lube on the ground next to her before her hands trace up Nancy’s thighs, lips chasing them, warm and wet on Nancy’s skin.

When she reaches the first straps of the harness, she kisses those, too, licks at the exposed skin between them. Finally, she stops, looking to Nancy for permission. At the dip of her head, Robin places a kiss to her thigh, the longest part of her hair flopping over her eyes. Nancy smooths it back, runs her thumb along the freckles above the bridge of her nose.

She doesn’t know what to expect, but it isn’t the torturously slow movement of Robin’s index finger from the base to the tip. Robin watches like it isn’t her own finger moving, and Nancy fights the urge to buck her hips.

With a kiss to her thigh, Robin says, “Don’t hold back. Wanna see how good it feels when I touch you.” She moves her finger again, teasing, and this time Nancy lets her hips roll the way they want to.

Robin hums approvingly, reaches for the lube, and then her hand shifts to fist the cock. She breathes a moan and begins making slow up and down motions, biting her lip as she watches herself. The sound of her moving against Nancy, the way her eyelids have begun to droop like they do when she’s especially turned on, the sight of her between Nancy’s legs, palm resting against skin and leather as she balances —all of it is obscene and perfect and so much, and even as Nancy rolls into the pressure, seeking, her eyes close again.

Before she can figure out whether to force them open, whether to apologize for being unable to look at Robin as she does something for Nancy that depends so much on Nancy’s ability to actually see it, Robin’s talking, voice low and familiar.

“You feel so good in my hand. I knew you would. Been thinking about touching you this way for a long time.”

She blinks her eyes open at that, finds Robin watching her steadily, pupils blown as she moves her hand.

“How long?”

Robin smirks, victorious, and Nancy would roll her eyes if she weren’t so focused on breathing, which her body appears to have forgotten how to do.

“I had a dream or two or fifty before we started dating, but that doesn’t really count.”

“I think it does.” She can’t help herself, but instead of teasingly argumentative, her voice is unsteady, almost like she’s been running, and her hips are giving her away, little jolts each time Robin presses just so.

Robin rolls her eyes lightly and presses just so for a beat longer. Nancy shuts up. It feels good, so good, and Robin’s voice, the way she’s teasing, grounds her, helps her keep her eyes open, at least for now.

“The first time I really thought about it was that party Nell’s art co-op hosted. When you fucked me over the hood of the car. You were grinding against my ass and all I could think was how much I wanted to get you off that way, how much I wanted to feel you while you fucked yourself against me, how fucking good you’d look with a strap.”

She moves forward, presses Nancy’s tank top up and kisses at her stomach.

“Good as you’d hoped?” Her eyelids flutter at the wet heat of Robin’s tongue.

“Better. You’re so fucking hot. It’s ridiculous, honestly. How am I supposed to get anything done? How am I supposed to focus in class? What do the Greeks have on Nancy Wheeler’s cock in my hand?”

She’s staring up at Nancy, moving steadily, and Nancy’s ability to think a full thought is rapidly diminishing. She needs to keep it together. She wants Robin to come for her, come around her, when she’s like this.

Before she can make a bad joke about the tragedies, though, Robin’s talking again. “I meant what I said in the car,” she says lowly. “I’m so wet. Desperate for you.” Robin knows exactly what she’s doing, her voice infused with the kind of whining want that makes Nancy liable to do things like bend her over the hood of a car, and it’s working as well as it always does. Nancy’s hips are moving with rhythm, and she’s drifting between Robin’s face and her hand on her cock, eyes open. “You like me desperate, right baby? I’ll do whatever you want. Wanna feel your cock in my mouth. Inside me.”

Her eyes, when Nancy settles on them, are so focused, her mouth set the same way it is when she works through a translation or an article. All that’s missing is the pencil between her teeth.

She’s being so good for Nancy, so good to her, and the waves of heat that have been rolling through and over her since she put the strap on are still there, but they don’t feel like they’re dragging her under any longer. Robin sees her. Robin wants her. Robin wants to give her what she wants. So, legs spreading a little wider, Nancy reaches down and interrupts the flow of Robin’s hand, her own fisting the base.

“You’ve been so good for me.” Robin’s so happy, watching her, and Nancy knows it’s just as much about the fact that Nancy has let herself want as it is about the praise. Probably more. God. It’s the least she can do, a selfish gift, to hold her strap steady and say, willing her voice not to crack, “Give me your mouth, baby.”

Lip caught under her teeth, Robin’s bright eyes leave Nancy’s as she adjusts, shifting forward in the space between Nancy’s knees. Her hands palm the tops of Nancy’s thighs, and then she’s leaning forward, lips pressed to the tip of Nancy’s cock. Her tongue appears, pink, pressing against the dark blue for a moment, and Robin lets out a happy noise before she looks at Nancy once more.

Nancy doesn’t close her eyes this time, but Robin does, lashes fluttering as she takes Nancy into her mouth and does as she’s told. Nancy’s stomach clenches as she watches, reminding herself to breathe, hands fisting at her sides as Robin’s mouth moves slowly lower. The noises of pleasure she makes are familiar, and Nancy can imagine the feeling of it, the soft and rough of her tongue and the pressure as she hollows her cheeks.

After a moment she pulls back with a small stuttering breath, blinks up at Nancy.

“Okay?” Nancy tucks her hair back.

She nods, wiping the back of her hand across the corner of her mouth, messy and perfect, and Nancy links their fingers.

“So good. God, Nancy. So, so good.”

Her body shifts tellingly and Nancy grins, raising her eyebrows. Robin rolls her eyes but then pulls her lips into a smirk, and Nancy doesn’t know the details yet but she knows enough to know she’s in trouble. Sure enough, the next second, Robin locks eyes with her and moves her mouth back to her cock, opens, and presses down until she chokes, the hand not in Nancy’s holding her at the base and pressing hard.

“Oh my god.” Her voice is louder than she means for it to be, and her hips jolt before she can think to stop them, pulling another, louder sound from Robin, but she doesn’t pull away until Nancy’s settled back on the couch. Moving her head back slowly, she finds Nancy with teary blue eyes and pops her lips off with a noise that belongs in the behind-the-curtain section of the video store down the road. Nancy might die. Her hips jolt again, barely missing Robin’s lips, and she burns with embarrassment. “Sorry. I’m so sorry. God. Are you okay?”

“Don’t apologize,” Robin rasps, and then she takes their joined fingers and brings Nancy’s hand to the back of her head. “I wanted it.” She licks at the strap, from where her hand is still holding to the tip, and Nancy’s barely breathing, fingers tightening in Robin’s hair enough to make her hum in satisfaction. “I want it again.” She kisses Nancy’s hip, rests her cheek on her thigh and looks up at her. “Will you give it to me?”

The sight of her, lips swollen and eyes teary, hair a mess where it’s caught between Nancy’s fingers, makes her heart pound, makes her want to touch and taste, to pull her apart roughly and then put her back together as gently as she can.

“I’ll give you anything you want,” she says lowly, not fighting the instinct to tell a truth bigger than the moment, one she tempers with a guiding pressure, bringing her back to the strap. The look Robin’s giving her tells her she knows anyway. “Take it,” she says, and Robin’s moan is muffled by Nancy moving into her mouth.

It’s slow at first, a meandering back and forth with Robin blinking up at her every now and then, making loud, pleased noises as she sucks and bobs. Nancy can feel her movement, watches with fascination as she lets spit dribble down and uses her hand to cover the space her mouth hasn’t reached yet.

And it is a yet, because her mouth is moving slowly lower, taking more and more. Eventually, she’s choking again, and before Nancy can even begin to check in, Robin’s hand covers hers on the back of her head, holds Nancy steady against her as she keeps moving.

“Oh my god,” Nancy says. “Robin. Robin.” Her hips are moving, Robin nodding her head in approval, obscene sounds filling the space of the living room.

Robin’s hand comes up to rest over leather, and she pulls herself off long enough to say, voice hoarse and full of conviction, “Let me make you come. Please. Want you to come in my mouth.”

The sound Nancy makes is embarrassing but undeniably affirmative, and Robin’s got her back in her mouth immediately, fingers slipping underneath leather and down. When her thumb finds Nancy, soaking wet and so close to the edge she’s shaking, Robin lets out a moan that, combined with the pressure, makes Nancy’s hips jolt.

“Yeah. Like that, okay?” Robin pulls back long enough to say, eyes wide and wet and pupils blown. “Take what you want, Nance.”

So she does. She lets her body move against Robin, her hand tight in her hair as Robin makes desperate sounds around her, thumb pressing against Nancy’s clit while her other hand grips at her thigh. It’s a minute, maybe, before her calves tighten and her back arches and she comes as hard as she ever has, Robin drawing it out, moving exactly the way she likes.

When she opens her eyes again, breath coming in hard gasps, she finds Robin still on her knees, watching her with lidded eyes. She grins slowly when their eyes meet, bends forward to lick at the strap, and Nancy’s body roars back to life.

“I want to fuck you,” she says, tugging Robin away from her cock and tightening the straps just a little, just to be sure. Robin whimpers, grin gone as her bottom lip disappears into her mouth. “That a yes?”

“Yes,” she confirms. “Please.”

A tug and Robin’s clambering up, shucking her jeans and briefs and throwing her shirt and sports bra away as quickly as she can. Not soon enough, she’s straddling Nancy, both of their eyes caught on the strap as it rests against her stomach. When Robin’s hips move, a needy sound breaking, she shakes herself back into the world and moves her hand down, sliding two fingers in and grunting in approval at the wetness she finds.

“Christ, Robbie. You weren’t kidding. You’re soaked.”

“Mmhmm,” she says, head thrown back as she grinds down. “More.”

Nancy gives her more, a third finger going in with no resistance, and Nancy leans forward to suck at a nipple, thumb moving to stroke at her clit.

“Nancy,” Robin begs, and Nancy nods, pulls back and pulls her fingers free. She reaches down for the lube just in case, and she rubs it over the strap, frowns as she wipes the leftover on the blanket on the couch. Another one for the wash.

Then they’re both breathing hard, staring again as Nancy lines herself up.

“Ready?”

“Yeah,” Robin says, and Nancy holds her cock steady with one hand as she guides Robin’s hip with the other, a steady downward motion.

She cries out, throwing her head back, and Nancy holds still but Robin’s shaking her head, sinking lower. “Don’t stop. Don’t stop.”

“Fuck.” It’s a whisper, her own amazement as Robin continues making sounds of approval, and then she’s in Nancy’s lap, thighs pressed together as she rests, rocking experimentally back and forth.

“Oh my god,” she says, meeting Nancy’s eyes for a second before finding her mouth, kisses desperate and clumsy. She’s moving again, up just the smallest amount, and Nancy’s hips chase her on instinct, drawing another noise of approval. “Oh my god. Yes, holy shit.”

They fall into a rhythm, Robin’s hands grasping at Nancy’s head and neck and shoulders, nails digging in, and Nancy’s hands at her hips, mouth moving over her neck and chest and jaw. Her thighs burn and her hips are going to be sore and she does not want to stop, ever.

One of Robin’s hands slips between them to rub at her clit and Nancy presses praises against her chest before sucking at her nipple and she’s falling apart, shaking against Nancy and slowing, holding Nancy’s head against her.

Nancy isn’t done, not unless Robin is, so after a few moments she drags her hands up Robin’s back and kisses up to her ear. “Can you go again?”

The groan Robin makes isn’t a no, and paired with the movement of her hips, it has nancy grinning into her skin.

“I think,” she says lowly, scratching at Robin’s shoulder blades, “that we should go to bed. I want to go down on you, and then I want you on your hands and knees. How does that sound?”

Robin’s answer is a slow, steady movement off of her, a little hiss of discomfort drawing a frown from Nancy, but then Robin is backing off the couch, grabbing her hand tugging. “Let’s go, Wheeler. Rude to keep a lady waiting.”

It’s just the three of them in the theatre, matinee on a movie that’s been out for a month, so when the preview for Mission Impossible 4 comes on, little Robin doesn’t bother hiding her groan, booing at the screen.

“God, when are they gonna stop making these? That guy’s the worst.”

Nancy knows it’s coming before Robin says a word, sighs loudly as, right on cue, her partner says, “You know Nance had a poster of him on her wall.”

“Oh my god!” Little Robin’s staring at her, delighted horror in the light of the movie screen, and her namesake grins at Nancy from over her shoulder. “Auntsy.” She gestures at the screen, where Tom Cruise is looking very serious. Something blows up. “Him?”

“Yes, him, thank you very much. It was the 80s. Risky Business was very popular.”

“Was it a Risky Business poster, Nance?”

Nancy cuts her eyes at Robin, arches a brow, but she’s smiling, happy to play, happy to be far, far away from the life where she tore Tom Cruise from Teen Beat and taped him to her wall.

Little Robin laughs, still delighted. “Oh my god, this is amazing. Leah’s gonna lose it.”

“It was twenty-five years ago. There were some things I didn’t understand about myself at the time,” she points out, reaching across and stealing the Milk Duds unrepentantly, ignoring Robin’s squawk. “And I thought you went to Carleton. Don’t you know about compulsory heterosexuality? Where do you have to send a kid to get liberal brainwashing done right these days?”

Little Robin waves her hand dismissively and Nancy sees her at six and sixteen and twenty all at once. “Oh, please. You’re, like, disgustingly happy with R1 and your gay little garden. You’ve got a signed panel of Dykes to Watch Out For framed on your wall. You’re driving to Ann Arbor to see Brandi Carlile in two weeks.”

“Dial it back there, Franklin Graham,” Robin says with a laugh.

Little Robin rolls her eyes. “Still not over the fact that you’re going without me, by the way. Anyway, nice try with the comphet Auntsy, but I get to make fun of you for having a Tom Cruise poster. And so does Leah. And also probably everyone else. Does my mom know?”

Nancy sits forward to make eye contact with her partner, does not offer to return the Milk Duds. “You know it’s going to be your fault when all we get for Christmas this year is Tom Cruise paraphernalia.”

Robin shrugs, grinning, and she’s very handsome, and Nancy shakes a Milk Dud into her palm and eats it with malice. Lips twitching in amusement, Robin brings her hand to her heart in false mourning, and Nancy shakes her head and sits back.

Little Robin is squinting in Robin’s direction, tilting her head.

“Hello?” Robin says. “Big Bird, do you copy?”

“You know…” Little Robin’s voice is thoughtful but there’s an undertone to it that Nancy knows well. “Young Tom Cruise. R1 with her 1998 hair. I can see the resemblance.”

Nancy barks a laugh, Robin making a sound of indignation.

“Excuse me?!”

Little Robin shrugs, sits back and focuses on the popcorn, grinning to herself. She knows what she’s done. Nancy loves her, the little shit.

Nancy offers the Milk Duds back to Robin, who takes them with a pout. They are a consolation and she knows it, chews one sadly.

“I don’t look like Tom Cruise,” she half-asks, and Nancy loves her, too.

“Of course not, baby.” She uses her best patronizing voice, smiles into her straw at little Robin’s snort.

“Nance! Nancy Wheeler. I do not look like Tom Cruise.”

“Shhh,” Nancy says. “It’s starting.”

“You’re both very mean to me.”

Two nights later, little Robin gone back to her parents, Robin appears in the door of Nancy’s home office in a button-down and crew socks, candlestick in hand.

“Oh my god,” Nancy laughs, out of her chair and in Robin’s space immediately. “Where the hell did you get that candlestick?”

“Thrift store,” she says proudly, Nancy’s hands already working at the buttons of her shirt. “The very nice woman at the checkout confirmed that I do not look like Tom Cruise.”

“Don’t talk to me about Tom Cruise while I’m trying to fuck you,” Nancy says, smiling into the skin of Robin’s neck.

“Copy that. Should I get a flight suit, though?”

Or they’re starting to. Nancy takes two rapid shots with her rifle, a gift from Hopper that holds a magazine big enough that Nancy doesn’t have to worry about a reload every minute. The familiar, desperate whining snarl lets her know she hit what she wanted to, and the rest of them snarl too, trading stealth for a full charge.

She hits three and then four, and five is in her sights when she hears it, that clicking sound, that awful buzzing, coming from the wrong direction. Her heart, which so far had barely pinged with now-familiar warning, begins to thunder, and she takes the shot at five and whirls as fast as she can.

It’s too late.

Robin goes down, hard, a dog’s body atop hers as she shields Max and Lucas, who are charging with their bats and chains.

“Stay back,” Nancy yells, because she needs a clear line, and they listen, thank god, habit and trust overcoming the panicked desire to save Robin as fast as they can. The dog is dead immediately, three viciously accurate shots dropping him. Three viciously accurate shots Nancy can make because Robin hadn’t been moving. Robin hadn’t been moving. Robin hadn’t been moving.

Nancy’s on her as fast as she can be, Max and Lucas not far behind, and she cries, not bothering to try to hide it, when she finds Robin’s dazed blue eyes open and looking at her, a wobbly smile on her face.

“Knew you couldn’t take the shot if I was squirming,” she says, breath uneven and blood seeping at an alarming rate from her shirt and her pants, and then her eyes close, and Nancy nearly loses her mind.

-

“It’s not your fault,” Steve says lowly from the chair on the opposite side of Robin’s hospital bed.

“Sure,” Nancy says, because she doesn’t want to argue, Robin’s clammy hand in hers, her already pale skin gone totally pallid, freckles washed out from blood loss.

“She’d tell you the same thing. She will tell you the same thing, when she wakes up.”

“I know.” And she does, but that doesn’t mean Robin will be right either.

Steve doesn’t say anything else, gets up and comes back with coffee for them both a few hours later, and they wait and wait and watch.

-

“Nance,” Robin says, so gently, like Nancy is the one coming home after a week-long stay in the government-run, we-don’t-talk-about-it hospital located, of course, in fucking Hawkins Lab. “I’m okay.”

“I know,” Nancy says, less gently, because she’s not as good as Robin, not at things like this. She can patch a wound. She can plan through a crisis. The after part? Well.

Her hands are gripped tightly on the wheel, car parked in the driveway of Steve’s house, which is Robin’s house, too, now. Her parents had left more than a year ago, accepting I’m eighteen as a good enough reason to let their only child stay in a literal hellhole while they drove somewhere not full of demons and cracks bleeding poison into the air. Nancy is, selfishly, happy that she’s here. Isn’t sure what she’d do without her. She also wants to throttle her parents.

A hand comes to rest over hers, fingers rubbing soothingly at her knuckles until she lets go, turns her hand until their fingers lace. She lets Robin bring their joined hands over, feels her whole body relax despite herself at the warm press of Robin’s lips to the back of it, the fond, tilted smile waiting for her when she lets herself look, blue eyes far too knowing.

“C’mon, baby. Take a nap with me.”

She nods, and Robin kisses her hand again, the inside of her wrist, and then squeezes before letting go, opening the car door even as Nancy says, “Hold on, hold on, hold on.”

She does, amused when Nancy gets to her side of the car, and it feels like a grate against Nancy’s guilty, worried chest. Because she is who she is, it shows as anger, which she knows because Robin’s face shifts to contrition.

“Sorry,” she offers, with a small smile, and god, Nancy’s a bitch.

She gets down on her knees, concrete damp through her jeans, and puts her palms over Robin’s thighs, callouses against the soft cotton of Steve’s stolen sweats.

“I love you,” Nancy says, looking into inexplicably soft eyes, and means I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. She can’t always say it, her pride blocking her airways even though she hates it, wants to claw it out and throw it away because Robin deserves a real apology, so many real apologies.

“I know,” Robin says, and cups Nancy’s cheek, leaning down to kiss her. “We’re gonna have to talk about it at some point,” she whispers as she pulls away. “But first we need a nap.”

She wears what she pleases, too. Today it’s an oversized tweed jacket and navy pants, a white button-down underneath. It’s been almost fifteen years since Nancy met her in Starcourt, throwing fireworks and telling wildly inappropriate stories in her Scoops Ahoy uniform, and a lot has changed, but her fondness for jewelry hasn’t, a silver chain on her neck and several silver rings on her fingers, flashing as she dips in and out of the lights. Her oxfords have seen better days, scuffed and creased, but Robin’s always been hard on her shoes, tripping and stomping and once upon a time, doodling. 

As Nancy leans forward in her chair, Robin clicks to a new slide and says, like the audience is in on the joke, “Now I know this looks exactly the same…” A triumphant grin flits across her face at the laugh she gets, and Nancy grins with her, proud. 

Nancy waits after the lecture, a small line of people forming to speak to Robin. She watches from a distance as they interact, grateful that the lighting in the room lets her stare without Robin catching on. She’s easy, confident, hands just as busy, occasionally running through the mop of hair on her head or shifting to rest in her pockets where Nancy knows she keeps a few coins to flip between her fingers. The people talking to her are, for the most part, women—students who nod and nod as Robin talks, a few colleagues Nancy recognizes who must say nice things, based on the way Robin’s hands go to her pockets. Her special interest is the translation of women from the Greek classics, the subject of the lecture, and she’s so passionate about it, so thoughtful and creative and invested. 

She looks like she’s exactly where she belongs. 

As the last person shakes Robin’s hand, she walks down the aisle.

“Have time for one more question, Professor?”

“Nance!” Robin drops the bag she’d been packing and moves forward to hug her, pressing warm lips to her cheek. Nancy sneaks her arms under her blazer and holds her close for a second. “What’re you doing here?”

“Interview canceled and I thought I’d come see my very favorite Classics Professor give a talk.”

“I’m sorry Professor Dennis isn’t on the schedule for the day. I’ll tell him you missed him.”

“Ha, ha,” she says with a kiss to Robin’s cheek. “Well I made reservations at that Italian place if you want to tell Professor Dennis to meet me there.”

“Nope!” She grins and grabs her bag. “I don’t, actually, thanks for asking. But I do want tiramisu.” 

-

Rosa’s fortieth is a blowout, a bar full of queers taking shots and whistling at drag queens, filling their tip buckets. The music is loud and the people are, too, in each other’s space laughing and drinking and dancing. It’s like they’re in college again, except a version that many of them never really got to experience, queer and unashamed. 

Robin and Nancy are in it like everyone, Nancy laughing as she licks salt from Robin’s neck and steals a lime from her mouth, blushing at the applause they get when she goes back for a kiss. They never stop touching, hands on waists or fingers linked, Robin holding Nancy from behind as they watch the show, kisses that are as close to thoughtless as they’ll ever be. 

When the stage clears and the bar shifts to karaoke, they settle at a high top in the back, Nancy’s hand wandering up Robin’s thigh and her lips wandering her neck. It’s rare enough, the freedom to do this without risking themselves, that Nancy wants to take full advantage, and she’s had enough tequila that she can without caring too much. These are their friends. This is their family. The most they get are teasing words and smirks, all undercut with obvious joy, with obvious solidarity—Look at you. I see you. I know who you are. I know who you are to each other.

After a few rounds, someone calls out Robin’s name, and then a chorus starts, and Robin goes, smiling, to the stage. She’s in black jeans and a black leather jacket open over a black t-shirt, her Docs beaten to hell. There’s lipstick on her cheek and down one side of her neck, and her hair’s even messier than usual from where Nancy’s run her hands through it. 

When she stands in front of the mic stand, drunk enough for her lips to pull into her cockiest smile, Nancy wants to get on her knees. 

She doesn’t, but she does bite her bottom lip so hard it hurts, and Robin’s smirk only grows. 

She sings Johnny Cash, I Walk the Line, catcalled the entire time by their rowdy friends. Nancy doesn’t mind, staying close enough that Robin can see her, winking occasionally in a way that makes Nancy weak, but far enough away that a line of people fills the space in front of her. It’s the attention she deserves, and it makes her heart settle, to see her getting it. 

Nancy worries every single time Robin travels alone, thinking about every gas station restroom and every sneering idiot at every roadside diner. She saw what it did to Robin, to have to choose between being comfortable in herself and being accepted by so many of her professors and peers and, later, colleagues. She’s chosen herself since she understood what that meant, brave and brilliant, and it has cost her but she hasn’t wavered. 

Now, the things that have put her at risk in the world in so many ways get her half-joking swoons and compliments low enough not to interrupt her but loud enough that Robin’s cheeks go a little pink and yep, someone’s bra, which makes Robin’s eyebrows climb to her forehead, lips twitching as she drawls the lyrics without pause. 

When she finishes, taking a bow and stepping into the crowd, her eyes are on Nancy, who pulls her into an absolutely filthy kiss. 

“Alright, Wheeler, we got it! She’s taken!”

“Damn right,” Nancy calls back, pulling away and letting her own cocky smile spread at the way Robin’s eyes flutter open slowly, her hands reaching for Nancy’s waist on instinct. 

“Yep,” Robin agrees, too soft for anyone but Nancy to hear, the next song already playing. Nancy turns them both to face the mic and leans back into Robin, who wraps her arms around her and whispers alternatingly vulgar and adoring things to her until Nancy drags her to the back hallway. 

-

“One of my students told me today that her great-grandmother’s sister was in a Boston marriage.”

Nancy’s fingers are drawing patterns on Robin’s bare stomach, her head resting on her chest. They’re naked and sated and too lazy to get up and turn the light off. 

“One of your queer kids?” She says, listening to Robin’s heart.

“Yeah.” 

This happens a lot, Robin being who she is, visible the way she is. Students find her and talk to her, and she listens, has pamphlets and referrals to a counselor in the student center she trusts for when she needs them. She supervises the gay and lesbian group on campus, brings Nancy to the holiday party. 

“She says she found letters, when she was in high school. Her grandmother had this whole trunk of stuff in her attic that nobody had ever bothered to go through, I guess, or they sure as shit would’ve burned these.”

“That bad?” By bad she means, of course, gay. 

“Apparently. To my student anyway. Her grandmother and mom talk about her Aunt Elizabeth and her best friend. They hadn’t seen the letters and Mia didn’t show them, but when she asked, they had these stories, talked all about how close they were.”

“Were they like sisters?” Nancy asks, in her best oblivious heterosexual voice. 

“They were,” Robin snorts. 

“How sweet.”

There have been many times when they’ve been mistaken for relatives or close friends, almost never able to correct any of those mistakes safely. It makes Nancy want to set fire to something every single time. 

“I hope I would’ve been lucky enough to be in a Boston marriage with you. The very un-sisterly kind.”

“Our queer great-great niece would find our love letters in a trunk. Maybe a picture. Holly’s kids and grandkids could hang it on the wall and talk about our close friendship.”

“I think I’d look good as a dandy.”

“Oh, you absolutely would.”

“‘Robin was very practical. She wore pants!’”

“What were Victorian strap-ons like, do you think?”

Robin groans. “Oh god, I don’t want someone finding our strap in a trunk.”

Laughing, Nancy turns up to kiss her chin. “No, no, we’d obviously make a plan. The other best friends would take care of it. But if someone did find it, they’d explain it away. A cleaning accessory.”

“A hat display.”

“A door stop.”

“A badly made rolling pin,” Robin stutters, laughing at herself. 

“Oh my god,” but she’s giggling, not trying to hide it. “A dildo, but one they used exclusively to prepare themselves for the husbands they were looking for. Together, of course. Like best friends. For practice.”

“For practice,” Robin wheezes, shaking Nancy’s body with her laughter. “Of course. They fucked platonically. Like,” she can barely get it out. “Like sisters.”

They’re still giggling a minute later, Robin pressing her lips to the top of Nancy’s head. 

“I don’t want anyone to assume us away,” she says, voice softer. Her fingers link with Nancy’s and she brings them to her lips. “I don’t want anyone to erase this.”

There are pictures—Nancy laughing in Robin’s lap, Robin’s arms tight around her waist and her eyes full of love; Robin kissing her cheek at a birthday party, bodies pressed close; a particularly beautiful shot of them dancing at Max’s wedding. There are letters—pages and pages from the months they spent apart when Robin was researching abroad in grad school and when Nancy’s been on assignment, nothing remotely platonic about any of them. And there are their friends, a whole community of people who know them, who’ve spoken about them and taken other pictures, the same way Nancy and Robin have for them. 

“Even if they wanted to,” she whispers into Robin’s skin as she presses herself up, moving until she’s looking down at pools of blue, “there will always be a Mia. There will always be people who know.”

“I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

For Robin’s sake, she will also attend whatever ridiculous fish funeral Dee and her performance theater people put on. The two of them will not be able to make eye contact, because they will both immediately start laughing, a lesson they learned at a harvest moon celebration that involved a set of pained, orgasmic noises thrown across an outdoor stage and into the audience by people dressed in tan turtlenecks. She will stand beside Robin and not look at her and inside she will be running a very lengthy commentary on fake problems and people who have more money than sense, which Dee and at least half her troupe do. 

(She is not dissimilar to her father sometimes, but Robin tells her it’s “style over substance, Nance, which here is a good thing. Dee is more like Ted than you, when it comes to what matters.” A wicked grin. “Try not to imagine your dad on stage next time we see them.”)

It’s halfway through lacing her second boot, hunched on the little stool by her front door and considering which 7-Eleven is the best option at this hour for Robin’s favorite sour candy, that Nancy realizes. Her hands slow on her shoelaces; her back straightens; and her mouth goes dry.

“Shit,” she says into the silence of her studio apartment. There’s some panic attached to it, but not the usual kind. Certainly not the world-ending danger panic that still sometimes rockets her awake at night. Not even the minor crisis kind that comes with leaving an essay at home or cutting it close with editing deadlines. 

It’s more internal, more incredulous. Less what are we going to do and more how could you not have known this? Because with the realization comes the knowledge that it’s been true for a long time. Years maybe. And Nancy has Wheeler genes, which means she is outstanding at ignoring and repressing and turning her head away when she doesn’t want to deal with her feelings. But Nancy’s also spent considerable time trying to learn not to be Ted. She sees a therapist, for god’s sake. 

So it’s a really, Nancy? kind of panic there at her front door, slumped back against the wall as she stares at the little side table with her keys and Robin’s keys and the green glazed little dish Robin had made for her in the ceramics class she took their first year of college. A watercolor she did hangs next to Nancy’s bed. She’s in more than half the frames on Nancy’s bookshelves, in the Polaroids on Nancy’s fridge. She has a drawer in Nancy’s dresser and a nightstand that’s all but officially hers, books of poetry and Greek classics stacked in the opening underneath the drawer, which holds a spare pair of reading glasses that Robin wears all the way down her nose. She’s everywhere, and Nancy only wants more. Nancy’s getting herself together to make an hour-long drive on a weeknight because Robin is freaking out over a fish, and the only thing she’ll be able to do is be there with her. Nancy wants to be there with her. 

Nancy is, as it turns out, entirely in love with Robin. 

“Shit,” she says again, and then forces herself to lace her boots.

After a night of watching Robin watch the fish, of carding her fingers through Robin’s hair on the sofa until she falls asleep in her lap, Nancy drives them both to a pet store, which according to the Yellow Pages ad has considerable knowledge about fish. They talk to a very enthusiastic kid who reminds Nancy of her brother if he ever smiled, and they leave with some droplets. Robin hugs her so hard before she drives back to Evanston that Nancy’s sleep-deprivation-inspired grumpiness evaporates. She holds Robin tightly to herself and breathes her in, which doesn’t feel weird because it’s what she does every single time she says goodbye. 

Really, Nancy?

Nancy has college friends. Nancy has good college friends. Nancy has good, queer college friends, who would absolutely mock her for what is maybe the most stereotypically lesbian thing she has ever done, and she regularly assists with set-building for the plays her friend Jamal directs, tool belt firmly in place. 

She doesn’t call them. 

She picks up her phone and dials a number she still knows by heart and when, on the third ring, Steve picks up with a lazy Hello, Nancy blurts, “I’m in love with Robin.”

There’s a moment of silence, and then, “Nancy?”

“I’m in love with Robin,” she says again, like she has some kind of virus that compels it. 

“Nancy,” he says, slower, gentler. “Did you…did you not know?”

“Did I…” She frowns. “Did I not…”

“Oh my god,” he breathes out. “You didn’t know.”

“Steve,” she says, a little helplessly, which she hates so much it makes her want to hang up the phone. 

“Oh, okay, yeah. Yeah. Sorry. Shit, I’m sorry, Nancy. What, uh…do you want to talk about it?” He tries, and yes, she does, because Steve is Robin’s best friend and loves her deeply and it had felt right, to call him, to call someone who could hear her love Robin and go, of course you love her, who could hum and say, isn’t she something? 

Instead, she says, only half-sure she wants a real answer, “It’s that obvious?”

He’s kind, when he explains that yes it is in fact that obvious. He talks about all the things Nancy knows, the things that had shot to the front of her mind last night at the door and then in the car and with Robin’s head in her lap and while Robin nodded intently and took notes on fish care. 

Really, Nancy?

“Does she know?” She asks, when she feels like she can.

“I mean, I’ve tried to tell her.” A pause. “Sorry about that. I just…uh…” 

I thought you knew, he doesn’t say, and Nancy thinks about what it would have been like to realize because Robin did something before she could, pressed her lips to Nancy’s one night before they said goodbye or didn’t let go the way Nancy never wanted her to anyway when they woke up together. 

“Does she…” She doesn’t finish the question. Steve shouldn’t be the one to tell her, and Nancy is coming to realize she doesn’t need him to, anyway. “Never mind.” She takes a deep breath. “Thanks, Steve. Really. I’ll talk to you soon.”

Steve laughs. “You’re driving back to Chicago,” he says, voice teasing. 

“I am,” she confirms. 

“It’s gonna be good, Nance,” he says, in a tone Nancy never expected to hear this way. “You both deserve something good.” 

“Thanks,” she says softly. “You do, too, you know?”

“There’s actually…there’s someone you should meet. Both of you. When you come home.”

“Melissa?” Nancy asks, and Steve groans. 

“Jesus, Robin. I should’ve known she’d be telling you everything.”

“Not everything,” Nancy corrects. “But she’s very excited about this one. She likes the way you talk about her. She likes the way she makes you feel,” she says, using Robin’s phrasing. 

“She makes me feel good,” he says, and Nancy smiles into the receiver. 

“Good.”

“Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, Wheeler, stop talking to me and go get the girl. And be prepared for me to ask you about your intentions when you come home for spring break.”

“I don’t think you want to hear about my intentions,” Nancy says, a little lecherously, and Steve barks a laugh. 

“Uh-huh, stud, good try but remember how we started this call.”

“Stud?” She snorts, but she does remember. “Thank you again. Really.”

“Go, go,” Steve says, and she hangs up and does just that. 

Robin’s got class, and Nancy’s skipping one of her own to make the drive back, but she doesn’t care. It’s an art history survey for a gen ed requirement, massive and boring and Lisa will give her notes anyway. She lets herself into the apartment twenty minutes before Robin’s class lets out, which means she probably has forty-five or so to wait anxiously on Robin’s couch before she gets back. 

She stares at Fingers, at the medicine droplets and the page with Robin’s notes sitting next to his bowl. He looks fine. He looks like a fish. He swims in circles. 

She tries to read, a long form piece mentioned in one of her journalism classes on Robin’s coffee table where she’d left it last weekend. Eventually, she gives up, eyes unfocused on the page. 

When Robin’s key turns in the lock, she’s back staring at Fingers. “Hi,” she calls out.

“Nance?” Robin’s tossing her jacket on the hook, grinning around the corner to see her. Her face falls when she sees Nancy, whose own smile must be an anxious mess. 

“He’s not dead,” she says, voice shaking a little, and Robin’s got her arms at Nancy’s biceps, eyes checking over her frantically.

“Nancy, what’s wrong? What happened?”

Really, Nancy?

“Nothing,” she says, forcing a breath, reaching up to squeeze at Robin’s hands on her arms and then stepping forward and wrapping her own around Robin, burying her nose in the fabric of her sweater. 

Robin’s arms close around her immediately, holding her closer, and her cheek rests on Nancy’s head as she says, “Okay. Okay. Are you sure? Because you looked…and you’re back here even though…shit, Nance, you have class. What’s wrong?”

Last night I was putting on my boots to come comfort you over a not-dead fish and I realized I was in love with you and it’s both the best thing that’s ever happened to me and terrifying. 

That’s not quite what she wants. Nancy’s good at words. She’s going to make a career of it. She’s also brave. She’s had to be. And Steve’s right. This is going to be good. This is Robin, and it’s going to be so, so good.

“I’ve been an idiot,” she says, and then pulls back. Her eyes flash to Fingers, still not dead, and she links her hands with Robin’s, pulls her to the sofa. She wants to look at her and be close to her, so she pulls one leg up and presses it against Robin’s knees where they’re crossed, keeps their fingers linked. Robin’s blue eyes are tracking her closely, concerned, and Nancy reaches up to run a thumb over the furrow between them. 

Really, Nancy? But now she’s going to do something about it.

“You’re my favorite person,” she says, and Robin’s worry stays, but a blush blooms in her cheeks. She keeps talking before Robin can say something sweet. “Last night, I was putting on my boots and thinking about you. That’s normal. I’m always thinking about you. Which is another reason why I’m an idiot for not…” She sighs and Robin’s head is slightly tilted now, eyes questioning and blush deep and beautiful against her pale skin. She stays quiet, for Nancy. “Anyway, last night I was thinking about how to make you feel better about Fingers and I was imagining the nightmare funeral Dee would have for him. And I thought about you laughing at that Harvest Moon performance and I realized…I realized I’m in love with you. And I have been for…for a long time.”

“Oh my god,” Robin says lowly, and then she leans forward and kisses Nancy deeply, hands framing her face and tongue licking into her mouth, and Nancy climbs into her lap and holds tight. 

Six months later, Fingers dies, and Robin shows up at Nancy’s apartment with the flyer for the funeral, bottom lip in her teeth and laughter in her eyes. They go, dressed in  blue and purple as requested, a tribute to his kind. When the lights dim in the basement, a rhythmic grunting emanating from backstage, Nancy squeezes Robin’s hand tightly and does not look at her. When the troupe emerges in jewel tone leotards, writhing and wailing with one another, she feels Robin’s body shaking with laughter. They make it, barely, snacking on vegan cookies and giving a weepy Dee a hug before hustling back to Nancy’s car. 

Tears stream down Robin’s face, her breathing ragged with laughter, and Nancy thumbs them away and kisses her. “Rest in peace, Fingers,” she says solemnly, sending Robin off again, and she’s so gorgeous when she laughs. 

“Robin,” Nancy says softly, at the same time Mike says, “I wasn’t-“ Robin ignores them both. 

“You were. You are. And it’s bullshit. So try again. Or let someone else give it a shot. I don’t care, really. But this,” she gestures at the map, where an elf figure stands in for Nancy, alone in the upside-down, if only for a little while. An advance guard, Mike had called it. “This is bullshit. This is a death sentence. And I think you’d realize that, if you thought about it for more than half a second.”

“I’ve thought about this!” He pushes to standing, and he’s got more than an inch on Robin, but it’s enough to make her tilt her head, just slightly, to keep their eyes locked. Mike looks smug, and Nancy’s stomach turns, but before she can intervene, Robin’s in his space, forcing him to take a step back, and the smug look is gone. 

“That makes it worse,” she hisses. “You realize that, right? That you looked at literal hell and thought, let me send my sister in there alone?”

“So you go in with her!” He says, like he’s made a point, but Robin only rolls her eyes.

“Obviously,” she says, scathing and dismissive, and he wilts, just a little. “If for some reason Nancy and the rest of the people in this room agreed to this fucked up plan, I would be there with her. Fuck whatever else you wanted me to be doing. But even though I’m pretty good with a Molotov and a baseball bat, I’m not a good shot. Definitely not as good as her. None of us are, which you also know, and have somehow decided to treat as an expendable skill belonging to an expendable person. Your sister.” Mike pales, but Robin doesn’t let up. “I would throw myself in front of her, and I’d be dead, and then she’d be alone. Again. So no,” she finishes, stepping back and crossing her arms. “This is not the plan. Call me when you have something real.” 

With that, she turns on her heel and pushes out through the basement door into the night. 

“She’s right,” Steve says, eyes tripping between the door and Mike and Nancy. 

“Yeah, man. She is. And anyway, there’s no way El would go for it,” Dustin adds. 

Nancy stays quiet, watches as Mike fists his hair in frustration, Will quiet on the sofa behind him. She catches Steve’s eye and tilts her head to the door and he nods. 

She’s about made it when Mike says, over the familiar cacophony of boys’ voices, “Nancy!” 

She turns back, waits, and he shoves his hands in his pockets. “I didn’t…I wasn’t trying to…”

“Sure,” she says, because he’s not making anything any better and she’s tired, so tired. “I’m going to find Robin.” She grabs a walkie and holds it in the air. “Call me if there’s an emergency.” 

Robin’s not hard to find, the light to Nancy’s room on, and so Nancy circles the house, goes past her dad, oblivious in the living room, and waves briefly at her mom at the kitchen table with Holly. 

“Robin looked sad,” Holly says, frowning, and Nancy steps in and kisses the top of her head. 

“She’ll be okay. Maybe in a little while we can come down and play Candy Land?” Holly’s face lights up at that, and Nancy kisses her head again, smiling at her mom. “Thanks for letting her in.” 

Her mom hums and nods. “You know we’re always happy to have her.” Her mom knows Robin’s mom, had frowned in a very particular way the first time Nancy mentioned Robin would be coming over. “Sheila’s girl,” she’d said, and Nancy had been a little worried until her mom had fed Robin extra lasagna and fussed over her and given her a massive hug before she left the next morning. Maybe she thinks that’s why Robin’s sad, and it’s true often enough that Nancy doesn’t offer any other excuse. 

“Thanks,” Nancy says again, and then makes her way up the stairs. 

Robin’s on the bed, shoes kicked off and jacket hanging from Nancy’s desk chair, the sleeves of her black and blue sweater pushed up to her elbows, which are sharp angles at her knees, arms wrapped tightly around herself. 

“Hi,” she offers quietly, and Nancy kicks off her own shoes and crawls into bed next to her. “I’m sorry,” she starts, but Nancy kisses whatever she was going to say next away. 

This is new, months’ worth of build-up and two college deferrals culminating in one desperately nervous, beautifully fumbling kiss at the end of a patrol shift a month ago. Nancy is stupidly in love with the person who’d become her best friend, and she finds herself acting like it, which would be mortifying except for the way that it makes Robin light up or look at her like she’s a dream or kiss her so fiercely she can barely breathe. 

Now, Robin’s arms unlock from her legs, coming to frame Nancy’s face, fingers tracing her cheekbones and jaw, soft and worshipful. Nancy presses at her legs until she gets the idea, straightens them so that Nancy can climb into her lap, thighs bracketing Robin’s and arms wrapped around her neck. 

“Hi,” Nancy says eventually, breath and words unsteady. “Are you okay?”

Robin’s face clouds with confusion, and Nancy kisses the wrinkle in her forehead. Her hands now rest on Nancy’s waist, and her thumbs press lightly into soft flesh, affectionate. 

“I’m okay.” Her head tilts as she takes Nancy in. “Are you okay? That was…that was…I’m sorry. I know you can defend yourself, obviously, like, you definitely don’t need me in there acting like an asshole, but I saw his stupid fucking plan and that stupid fucking elf that he…that was supposed to be you, and I just…” She collapses a little, shoulders hunching as she sighs. “I’m sorry.”

“Please don’t be,” Nancy says. “Please don’t be sorry. Not for that. Not for…”

If it had been Steve or Jon or anyone else, really, Nancy might’ve bristled. Would’ve bristled, would’ve pushed to the front to tell Mike herself that the plan wasn’t going to work, voice loud no matter how tired and hurt she was. With Robin, she hadn’t felt the need. With Robin, she hasn’t felt the itch that had been ever-present with Jon and Steve, the constant, needling reminder that someone wanted her to be kept, to be possessed. It wasn’t fair to them, probably, but it was true. With Robin, it isn’t. Maybe because Nancy feels for the first time that it’s mutual, that she wants to keep and be kept, that Robin wants the same.

She kisses Robin again, hard, teeth nipping at her bottom lip, and her stomach burns when Robin whimpers, grips tighter at her waist, the fabric of her shirt wrinkling against her skin. Robin noses into her neck, wraps her arms around Nancy and pulls her closer. 

“He’s not allowed to do that,” she says, breath hot against Nancy’s skin. “I won’t let him.”

Nancy combs her fingers through Robin’s hair, scratches at her back. “I know, baby. I know.” She kisses Robin’s temple. “You’re not allowed to throw yourself in front of me. You hear me?”

“You’d do the same thing,” Robin says matter-of-factly, only a tinge of petulance, and Nancy can’t argue, but she isn’t happy about it.

“I love you,” she says instead, throwing away all her worries about too much, too soon because that means nothing when it’s the end of the world and it’s her best friend in her arms, anyway. Robin’s breath stutters against her collarbone, body tightening against Nancy’s. Nancy kisses her temple again, softly. 

When Robin pulls back to look at her, her eyes are big and her voice is raspy but unwavering. “I love you, too.”

The kiss moves quickly from soft to demanding, Robin’s hands scratching down her back to the hem of her shirt and Nancy’s got it off and over the side of the bed immediately, unclasping and tossing her bra to join it without hesitation. 

Robin’s mouth is on her as soon as it’s gone, sucking at Nancy while her other hand roughly palms, and Nancy arches into the contact, moaning into her knuckles with one hand and keeping Robin close with the other, fingers tight in her hair. 

“God, I can’t wait until my parents leave next week. Want to hear you.” She licks at Nancy’s nipple, kisses and sucks again before moving to the other side, switching her hand while Nancy rocks her hips down in search of friction. 

She finds none, and, desperate, reaches down to the button and zipper of her jeans, undoing them and forcing herself from Robin’s body so that she can shimmy them off and throw them to the floor along with her underwear. Robin’s eyes watch closely as she climbs back onto the bed, back onto her, and her hands run hot over Nancy’s skin, grabbing at her ass and scratching over her back. 

Her mouth is busy at Nancy’s neck, kissing and whispering affirmations and praises that have Nancy half out of her mind. It had been a very exciting discovery, that Robin’s as free with her words when she’s touching Nancy as she is the rest of the time. Her lips travel lower, and Nancy’s about to start touching herself when Robin’s hand reaches between her legs, finally. 

Nancy’s sigh escapes at the same time as Robin’s groan. “So wet for me, Nance. God. Feel so good.” She slips a finger inside, then two, and it’s so good, exactly what Nancy needs. Her hips rolls down and Robin meets her movement for movement, her free hand resting on Nancy’s hip as she breathes heavily and watches. 

It makes Nancy burn, Robin’s eyes on her as she rides her, and she wants to give Robin all of it, wants her to see exactly how much Nancy wants, so she raises herself off of Robin’s fingers regretfully and puts a little more distance between them, adjusting so that she’s straddling one of Robin’s legs, her own able to spread wider. Settled, she takes Robin’s hand and positions it back between her legs, gliding her fingertips over her clit and then positioning them at her entrance. 

Robin’s eyes are all over her, roaming from her own fingers waiting between Nancy’s legs up and up and when she makes it to Nancy’s eyes, Nancy holds her gaze and sinks down, head back and chest out, showy and as loud as she can be without risking a very awkward knock at her door. (It’s locked. It’s always locked these days, and if her mom has noticed she says nothing.) 

“Nancy,” Robin says, shaky. “Fuck.”

She raises herself up and sinks down again, and when she’s sure Robin isn’t going to move, she brings her own hands to her tits, playing with her nipples and sighing at the feeling. 

She’s been having sex with Robin for about three weeks, and she has, to put it simply, felt like a massive slut, wanting and desperate and giving everything she has away without even the smallest bit of hesitation. She has exactly no regrets, and Robin looks at her like she’s the best thing in the world and gives just as much of herself. Nancy’s obsessed with the ways they’re different, the way they fit together in what they want and how they want it. It’s so good she has, on more than one occasion and so embarrassed she can hardly stand it, cried. 

She isn’t crying now, though. She’s sighing Robin’s name and feeling Robin curl her fingers just the way Nancy is learning she likes, and she’s asking, begging, for, “More.”

Robin sucks at her collarbone as she adds another finger, biting and causing Nancy to cry out louder than she should, the sharp pain and the stretch exactly what she wants. 

“Shh, baby,” Robin says, confident and soothing and making Nancy somehow wetter. She brings her hand from Nancy’s hip to her lips, and Nancy sucks two fingers into her mouth happily. Slut, she thinks, and then wonders how it would feel if Robin called her one, too, shivers and files that away for later. 

“You look so good,” Robin says, leaning back again to watch Nancy work herself against her fingers. “I wonder…” She bites her lip and Nancy sucks harder on her fingers, hollowing her cheeks in encouragement. “Fuck. God you’re so good at that. I wonder if…maybe I can get a strap-on,” she says, coloring even as her eyes grow heavier at what Nancy assumes is the thought of it. 

She moans around Robin’s fingers, nodding, pulling free to voice her agreement, mouth wet. “Oh my god, yes.” She takes the fingers back, pushing her head so far forward she nearly gags, and imagines riding Robin’s that way, imagines taking her into her mouth. She hadn’t ever thought about it before. She is going to have trouble thinking about anything else, now. 

Her hips move faster and Robin groans, pulling her hand away from Nancy’s mouth and down, finding her clit with her thumb. Nancy clenches around her, thighs burning as she moves hard and fast, wanting and wanting. She takes a hand from her breast and tugs Robin forward to take its place, and it sends her over the edge, body folding into Robin’s as she comes, shaking and biting into the fabric of her shirt to keep herself quiet. 

Robin’s hand is moving up and down her back, holding her close as she comes down, and when she asks, with a gentle pull at the fingers still inside, “Okay?” Nancy nods against her and whimpers a little at the loss of them, the empty feeling. 

With both hands free, Robin wraps her up fully, pulls so that Nancy is sideways in her lap, pressing kisses to her head and cheek and nose, along her jaw. “I love you. I love you. God, Nancy, you’re so gorgeous. You’re everything. You’re everything.”

Nancy curls further into her, forehead against her neck, and basks in it, tilts and presses her own kisses to Robin’s chin and strong jaw. “I love you,” she echoes, stomach fluttering at the novelty of saying it aloud. They’re quiet and close, and Nancy falls into a calm, happy place. 

“Holly was worried about you,” she says eventually, nuzzling at Robin’s cheek. “I told her we might play Candy Land.” 

“Are you gonna accuse me of cheating again?”

“You were cheating.”

“Not the question I asked.”

“You’re absurd. I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

“I was trying to help her win,” Robin says, and Nancy grins at the pout she can hear in it. 

“She needs to learn how to lose.”

“Not from me.”

“Hmm,” Nancy responds, giving up the argument in favor of a kiss. “Let me put pajamas on and we can go play.”

“I don’t love that plan.”

“I’m not playing Candy Land naked.”

“You know that’s not what I meant.”

“I do.” She presses a kiss to Robin’s cheek and climbs out of bed. “You need to change, too, so Holly doesn’t ask questions.”

“Robin,” she says, gently, and Robin’s mouth shifts ugly, a scowl, as tears prick at her eyes. 

“Don’t,” she says, voice breaking. “Don’t do that. Don’t feel sorry for me.”

“You’re doing plenty of that yourself.” It’s not meant to be unkind, but she’s lost the gentle tone, understands that maybe it’s not what Robin needs. She wants very much to give Robin what she needs. 

“We don’t have to do this,” Robin says again, crying for real this time, and wiping forcefully at the tears with the sleeve of her jacket. It’s not soft, and Nancy winces as she watches, isn’t surprised to see splotchy red start to form around her eyes. 

“Robin,” she says again, and then asks the question. “Was she telling the truth?”

-

It hadn’t been Vecna. It hadn’t been some otherworldly horror, or a Russian with a syringe. It had been teenage cruelty, ordinary and terrible, one of Robin’s notebooks in Jennifer G.’s manicured hands. 

“I speak French,” she said, grin sharp and mean, and Robin, who’d thrown fire at monsters and pushed herself to the front of the danger without a thought, bent into herself, small and terrified in the corner of the newspaper room where Nancy had found them. Eyes on Nancy, Jennifer turned the pages of the notebook. “Thought you might wanna know you’ve got a pervert writing poetry about you, Nance.”

“Nancy.” Robin’s voice was small and pleading, and Nancy was confused, but not confused enough to let that stand. 

“Give me the notebook,” she said, hard, and Jennifer became even more interested. 

“Oh? Oh. Do you already know? Do you like it?”

“Makes sense,” Britney had said from behind her, almost bored. “Her last boyfriend was such a pussy, he might as well have been a girl.”

“Fuck you.” Reflexive and hard and Nancy was angry, mind working to fix a problem she didn’t fully understand. She squared her shoulders, smiled the most dangerous smile she could at Jennifer. “You know, Carol told me all about you. She never mentioned French, but she knew a lot about what else you did with your mouth. Want me to share with the class?” 

The bell rang, and Jennifer narrowed her eyes, saw that Nancy wasn’t kidding. The spark of fear faded, though not fast enough for Nancy not to see it and smirk, trying to pretend her heart wasn’t cowering in that corner with Robin. 

Eventually, she rolled her eyes and dropped the notebook to the ground. “Whatever,” she said. “Dykes.”

By the time they left, Nancy feeling like she could safely turn back to Robin, she was gone, the slam of the back door making her wince. 

-

As she asks the question, she reaches into her bag and takes out the notebook, stretches the little distance between them to put it near enough for Robin to take. She doesn’t, but she stares at it, stares and stares. 

“I didn’t look,” Nancy offers. “Not that I would’ve been able to read it.” It’s an attempt at a joke that neither one of them finds funny. 

Now, Robin does take the notebook, flipping to a page and closing her eyes hard, biting her lip. “You’d have been able to read this,” she says eventually, blue eyes half-vacant in something like resignation. Her hand is shaking when she hands Nancy back the notebook, and her eyes catch immediately on her name, scrawled across the bottom of the page. 

“I didn’t write the poem.” Her voice is soft, her fingers playing in the dark, wet dirt, eyes turned down to watch them. “She was wrong about that. It just made me think of you.”

“What does it say?”

Robin looks at her, a flash of sadness, and then she talks, honest and brave. “This one is about hope. It’s about…about two lovers. Women. And I thought, well—

Tu me donnas ton front, tu me donnas tes mains,

Et je ne craignis plus les mauvais lendemains.” 

She takes a deep breath, looks down again. “You nudged me with your forehead, then gave me your hands, And I no longer feared uncertain tomorrows.”

“Robin,” Nancy says, heart pounding and aching and gone, gone, gone, sitting with the girl next to her. “Robin.”

“I’m sorry.” She’s crying again, blue eyes overflowing when they look at Nancy and then tear away. “I’m so sorry. I promise, Nance, I would never…I would never do anything, and I shouldn’t have ever-I shouldn’t have…” She’s sobbing, and it’s too much, and Nancy can finally move again, unstuck, and she has her arms around Robin, pulling her close. 

There’s a moment of tension, but Nancy holds fast. “It’s okay. You’re okay. It’s okay, sweetheart, I promise.” And then Robin clings, hands around Nancy’s forearm where it wraps around her knees. 

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. Two fucking weeks left in that shithole school and I leave my notebook out like an idiot, and of course fucking Jennifer G. speaks French. She never shuts up about her family trips to Paris, and god, Nancy, I swear I…I would never…I’m not…”

“Robin,” Nancy says, moving the arm wrapped around her back to hold her chin, turn her so that their eyes meet, and then Nancy kisses her, soft and sure. 

“Wow,” Robin says, dazed and then, “Shit, oh my god, I’m disgusting. I’ve been crying and I know I’m an ugly crier, like, I know that and-“

Nancy kisses her again, and she does taste like the salt of her tears, and her face is wet where Nancy cups it, and it’s quite possible her nose is running, and Nancy absolutely does not care. 

“You just recited me a love poem. In French. From memory. Because it made you think of me. Obviously I’m going to kiss you.”

Robin blinks, then blurts, “There’s more.” Her face, already red from crying and probably from Nancy’s kisses, turns darker still, and Nancy can’t help but thumb at the color, grinning. 

“Oh, really?” 

“Um. Yeah. Yeah. There’s…” She sighs, and Nancy kisses her cheek before she starts, because she has a fair idea about where she’d like this to go, and she’s not interested in leaves in her hair or ruining her blouse, which is new and blue and cut in a way that Nancy is fairly certain Robin will appreciate, once Nancy makes it clear she’d like her to. 

“Wait.” 

“‘Kay,” Robin says immediately, and oh, Nancy’s going to have so much fun with her. 

She kisses her cheek again and then moves to stand, holding out a hand to Robin, who shoves her book and the notebook into her bag before taking it. 

They’re halfway to Nancy’s car before Robin asks, “Where are we going?”

“To the quarry, if your parents are home. To your house, if they’re not and that’s okay with you.”

“O-okay. They’re…they’re home I think.”

“The quarry then,” Nancy says, unlocking and opening the passenger door for Robin, who stares at her like she’s never seen a car before. “Robbie?” 

“Yeah, yeah, totally, sorry, shit.” She ducks into the car, barely managing to avoid hitting her head, and Nancy’s so fond of her that it’s painful. “Um, to be clear,” she says, turning to Nancy as she settles in the driver’s seat and checks her mirrors, “because, like, this has been a real, a real weird day for me—perfect! Like, dream kind of perfect, aside from the humiliation by cheerleader, which is actually also a dream I’ve had. Not like in a sexy way. Jesus. Anyway! Um, we’re…we’re going to the quarry to, to…?”

Nancy’s looking at her, suppressing a laugh. “I didn’t want to ruin my clothes making out with you in the woods. So I thought we could make out in the backseat of my car instead. If that’s alright with you.”

“Holy shit,” Robin says, blinking rapidly. 

“That a yes?” Nancy asks, smile tugging at her lips as she pulls out of Robin’s neighborhood. 

“Yes, please,” Robin confirms, and Nancy feels fingers tentative on her own, flips her hand so that Robin can thread them together. 

She squeezes Robin’s hand and isn’t afraid. “I might have to learn French.” 

-

Four of the five young Harringtons proceed through the line now, giving her big hugs and whispering variations of, “I’m really sorry, Auntsy.” She hugs them and thanks them and loves them and sends them all to eat something. “We’re here, Nance, whatever you need,” Melissa says, the end of the Harrington line. “Steve and Robin are going to stay to help after, and I can come back too, once I get everyone settled at home.”

“Thanks, Mel.”

“We love you,” she says seriously, big brown eyes on Nancy before they make their way around the room with a barely concealed scowl. “And if you want to leave…”

Nancy smiles at her and hugs her again. “I love you,” she says. “I’m okay. I promise.”

“Mmm,” she says, squeezing Nancy’s hands. “You’re a saint, is what you are.” Leo and Allie, the two youngest, are in a conversation that looks to be quickly approaching a fight, and Mel sighs and gives her an apologetic look. 

“Go,” Nancy says. 

“I have so much wine for you at home,” she says with a kiss to her cheek. 

The smile that breaks across Nancy’s face is real, even though she’s exhausted, and it seems good enough for Mel, who has her arms around two sets of little shoulders, bent and whispering furiously, so fast that Nancy can hardly process it. 

Robin’s handling logistics, eyes on Nancy every few minutes, a hand against the small of her back anytime she passes and Nancy isn’t in the middle of talking with someone. She’s a hero. Nancy wants nothing more than to curl up against her in their bed and tell her so. She tries to convey her gratitude now, eyes catching Robin’s, and by the way Robin’s mouth turns up at one side, the way she winks, Nancy thinks she gets it. 

“You fell for a real nerd.” It’s the fifth little Harrington, working her way into a hug. She’s got more than six inches on Nancy, finally surpassing her namesake last summer. “I’m really sorry, Auntsy,” she whispers into the space near Nancy’s ear, and Nancy holds her tight for a moment, this human she’s loved since before she was born. 

“Dad went to help R1,” she says when they pull apart, coming to stand beside Nancy and leaning into her. “What can I do?”

Nancy catches sight of Steve with his arms around Robin, feels gratitude and affection bubble in her chest. This has been a shit time for Robin, too. The thing that almost made Nancy step away entirely, actually, except her perfect nerd had looked her dead in the eye and told her that they could all fuck off, that she would do exactly what Nancy wanted and anyone else could “eat shit, Nance. I’m absolutely serious.” Nancy loves her profoundly. 

“Being here is a big help.” At Robin’s raised eyebrow, she shakes her head, smiles. “Don’t try that with me. I taught you that. I’m serious. There’s nothing right now. Robbie’s got logistics, Mike stepped out for a smoke and Holly’s with Mom getting her kids situated, but they’ll both be back soon. It’s more than enough that you’re here.” Wrapping an arm around her, she lets her voice be tired as she says, “It’s a big help. Believe me.”

Robin wraps her own arm around Nancy, and watches, mouth turning down, as a series of mourners walk past Nancy like she’s not there. When Mike shows up a few minutes later, and Holly a few minutes after that, people begin to wander over, Nancy getting a nod or nothing at all more often than not. Holly, bless her, always tries to correct. “You remember my sister, Nancy,” and Mike, true to character, waffles between ignorance and a deep scowl. Nancy can’t blame him, really. It’s a rough day. 

“Auntsy, it looks like they need you,” Robin says loud enough for Mike and Holly to hear. They wave her away, and Nancy tries not to ache at the relief Holly can’t quite hide. 

Robin directs her to the kitchen area and then walks them both right through it and out into one of the courtyards, small and quiet in the cold of Indiana November. “Wait,” she says, and a minute or two later appears in her coat with Nancy’s in her hands. Nancy shrugs it on, and Robin guides her to one of the little benches near an empty fountain. 

“God, that was bullshit,” she huffs, looking so much like her dad that for a minute Nancy sees him there, patented indignation and furrowed brow. “Sorry,” she says with a wince. “Shit, sorry. I probably shouldn’t have just dragged you away like that. I just…they’re awful. And Mike and Holly are literally no help, like what the actual fuck? These people are walking around you like you’re a fucking ghost at your dad’s funeral.” She takes a breath, such a blend of the people Nancy’s loves, and grimaces. “Sorry. Again.”

Nancy doesn’t try to hold her amusement back, feeling lighter than she has all day, smile tugging at her mouth. “Well, college has really given you quite the vocabulary.” 

Robin groans and Nancy laughs, nudges her arm with her shoulder. 

“You know, I was always going to love you. No matter how you turned out. Part of the aunt gig. But you really are one of my very favorite people, you know that, Robin Harrington?”

Robin blushes like Melissa, whole face coloring, and she presses back against Nancy as she says, “Yeah, well, you’re one of mine, too. I can’t believe someone so cool dated my dad.”

Nancy laughs again. “Your mom’s very cool.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Robin concedes. “Well done, dad, I guess.”

She kicks at the gravel with her worn Docs, paired unrepentantly with her black tights and long sleeved black dress, and looks over at Nancy. 

“It’s okay,” Nancy says. “You can ask, if you want.”

She does, quietly. “Auntsy. Why are you here? Why are you doing so much for him when he…when he…”

“I don’t know,” she says honestly, smiling at the look of surprise on Robin’s face. “You know, they called me first. He and Mom are officially divorced, and I’m the oldest daughter, so. Next of kin. They had no way of knowing we hadn’t spoken in fifteen years, and I’ve always been…Robbie once called me Emergency Barbie.”

“Yikes,” Robin says with a snort.

“Mmm. She meant it as a compliment. We were young. She was, as she told me later, an absolute idiot over me.”

“Yeah, well good to know some things don’t change.” 

Robin Harrington’s eye roll is on that list, and Nancy tells her so, gets another one for her efforts. 

“Anyway, I fell into it, into the organizing, into the doing, and suddenly I was the one speaking with the funeral director and picking dates and talking to the preacher.”

The preacher, who’d asked Nancy what she’d loved about her father in some well-intentioned attempt to write a personal sermon and had only forced Nancy into a corner. “He was a great driver,” she’d said, and instead of understanding that as the flashing red light that it was, the signal that not all had been well, the preacher had included that in his sermon, along with Holly’s fond reflection on his sense of humor and Mike’s generic sports stories. 

Robin had squeezed her hand and tried valiantly to bury her laugh in a cough, while Nancy had flushed bright red and fought tears. 

“You’ve got two siblings,” Robin says pointedly. “Two siblings who still talked to him. For some reason.”

“I do.” Nancy confirms, with a gentle hand to Robin’s knee. The vicious, unyielding loyalty is more precious than she’ll ever be able to tell her, but she never, ever wants Robin carrying her burdens. “And I made the choice to do it anyway.” 

This is where she straddles the line between recognizing that her niece is a young adult and still her niece. She doesn’t tell her that if she’d left it to Mike there would’ve been no service at all, which might’ve been fine, on reflection, but didn’t feel like it at the time. She doesn’t tell her that Holly has young kids and still treats Nancy like a third parent even as she pushes her away. She doesn’t tell her that she’ll always be their big sister, Ted and Karen’s oldest, and that means something that Steve and Melissa have tried to make sure it doesn’t mean for Robin. She certainly doesn’t tell her that she might always feel the need to show she’s good enough, better than good enough, or that this is in some ways her last fuck you to her father, his dyke daughter the only one willing and able to do this for him. 

“Yeah, no.” Robin’s not having it. “They’re grown ups. Not saying you didn’t have a choice, or whatever, but whatever the fuck’s going on in there is totally ridiculous, especially because they let you do all the work.”

“It’s complicated,” she concedes, and thinks of the days she used to sit with her dad and read the newspaper, the smiles that became rarer and rarer as she got older, the way Holly didn’t seem to grow out of his affection the same way. 

“I’m sorry,” Robin says. “I don’t mean to make it worse.”

“Oh, sweet girl.” She hugs her, and Robin makes herself smaller, tucks her face into Nancy’s neck. “You didn’t. You have made this day so much better. Thank you.”

“It was his loss.” Her voice is wavering, and Nancy holds her tighter, tears pricking at her own eyes. “He missed out on one of the best people in the world. I’m sorry, Auntsy. I’m sorry he didn’t do better.”

“I love you, kiddo.”

“Love you, too.”

Robin finds them there a few minutes later, little Robin talking through her course selection with Nancy, matching frowns of concentration on their faces. 

“Big bird,” she says with a nod to Robin and doing a terrible job of concealing the worry in her voice. “Love of my life,” she says, bending to kiss Nancy’s forehead and ignoring Robin’s retching noise. “It’s cold and the service is about to start.” 

Robin scoots closer to Nancy, and her other aunt fits herself onto the seat with them, linking her fingers with Nancy’s along the back of the bench. 

“Do you want to go back inside?” 

Nancy considers, has no interest in feeling like a ghost, in feeling the presence of any others. “No,” she says, and both Robins grin. 

“Understood. Give me five.” She presses a kiss to Nancy’s lips this time, and Robin gives a long suffering sigh but she’s smiling when Nancy looks over to her. 

Five minutes later, the rest of the Harrington crew arrives carrying hot chocolate. “It’s the shitty church kind,” Steve says, and Melissa rolls her eyes. “But at least they’re the ones with marshmallows, and I stole the coffee supplies to make it with milk, so.” He presses a cup into Nancy’s hands and then kisses her head, does the same to little Robin. 

“I brought cookies,” Robin says, triumphant from the doorway to the fellowship hall a minute later, and Nancy’s pretty sure the delighted cries of the kids can be heard at the service, but she can’t bring herself to care. 

She finds herself sandwiched between her favorite Robins, Melissa scooting another bench close while Steve starts a game of soccer on the grass outside the courtyard with the younger kids. 

“Need anything?” Robin says quietly, while Melissa and little Robin chat about dinner plans. 

“You,” she says, kissing Robin’s flushing cheek.

“My god.” 

“Oh, hush,” Melissa says. “Have you told your aunts about how the front porch swing broke?”

“She has not,” Nancy says, linking her arm through her Robin’s and settling back into her. “But she was telling me about her spring class schedule and her summer plans.”

Little Robin smiles gratefully, and Robin oooohs. “I wanna know! You know I love a class schedule.”