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aerosp-ace · 3 years ago

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didn't wanna have to do it (ronance)

a/n: short ronance blurb bc i love my girls + will lose sleep for orientation tomorrow over writing them

(1,502 words)

Somewhere along the way, Nancy stopped being Nancy Wheeler and became something in between. Now she and Robin were sprawled, connected by bare prickly legs and sticky summer arms, across her unmade bed. Robin snored into her hair. Sinus issues from the Upside-Down. Nancy drooled on her left arm. They slept together in every sense of the phrase.

Her mom had stopped trying. At first, when it was going on two days of Robin now existing in permanent company with the Wheelers, Karen had dropped some unsutble hints about booting her out. But now they were two weeks out from the spring break from Hell and Robin was still here. She’d always be here, draped over Nancy. Protecting her even in sleep, starfish style.

Nancy woke up first. She’d let herself lie there for a peaceful moment, appreciating the red tints on Robin’s cheeks from how overheated her bedroom got. Their hair mixed together on the singular pillow. Nancy lifted a hand to hold onto Robin’s calf. Long, pale, and unshaved. The little dark hairs underneath her fingertips felt like carpeting. She pressed her nose to Robin’s neck and took a deep breath in.

At the kitchen counter, they’d formulated a routine. Ted at the head of the dining room table, coffee in one hand and newspaper in the other. Holly across from him or, when she was feeling up to it, at the counter with Robin and Nancy. Nancy would grab the bowls, Robin poured the milk as Nancy poured the cereal in the other. They dunked each others’ spoons in their respective bowls. Robin liked water with ice in the morning. Nancy liked room temperature.

Mike often wedged his way in between them, half of the time a furious whirl of conversation and the other a ghost of a person. When he was a ghost, Robin poured him cereal. When he was up for living, he’d pour his own - ripping the box from her hand and spilling out marshmallows all over the kitchen in the process.

When it was nice enough outside, a rare occurrence with the apocalypse and all, they’d sit out on the back patio and share bites of soggy Lucky Charms. Robin fed Nancy bites of hers. Nancy let her steal when she was pretending not to look. Which was a complete lie, because Nancy was always looking at Robin. She and the way the morning sun reflected off her face, as if she was as dew-coated as the grass and the shrubs. Robin the garden. Robin the flower. Nancy reached over and tucked a stray hair behind Robin’s ear. It felt like water between her fingers.

What she liked particularly about Robin’s hair was its innate ability to bounce back from any and all obstacles - a bad hair day was unheard of. Especially then, with her bangs grown out far too long to keep clung to her eyelashes, Robin’d tuck strands behind the backs of her ears. It gave her this sense of forlorn curtains on her cheeks, sticky with summer sweat and baby hairs clinging to her forehead - the gaps in the hair where the bangs used to be. It made her face look as if it were a stage newly opened to the public, the show about to start. Nancy took a front row seat.

When the bangs got far too long for Nancy to tolerate and Robin to properly tuck, she easily convinced Robin to get it cut. But the barber had been eaten by a demogorgon, so Nancy had to learn to work a pair of cutting scissors instead. She pushed the chair from her bedroom desk into her bathroom, blushing over the pink walls and little girl makeup kits in the drawers as if Robin hadn’t been practically living in her house for the past two months. Robin sat dutifully on the wooden chair. It was clearly a struggle to sit so still, but Nancy’s hands in her hair had her fairly pacified. She leaned her head back to offer more access, some blissful smile spreading across her face as Nancy chopped unprofessionally at stray hairs and guessed at length.

Then the cutting was over and washing began. Robin bent herself over the half-shower, half-bath to allow Nancy more access. Her knees hit the tile without much ceremony, eyes closed and turned up to Nancy like a sunflower as she ran her hands through the locks over and over again. The sight was almost religious. Nancy couldn’t take it - she had to duck Robin’s head underneath the faucet just to survive. Baptism.

And now her hair didn’t look half-bad. Nancy’s poor attempts at chopping it had all but returned her bangs to their natural state (sleeping on her forehead) but Robin didn’t seem to mind. In fact she hardly recongized she had hair anyway. Nancy stopped worrying about curlers and perms. Her hair grew stringy and straight, the way it had been when Barb was there to brush it out.

Robin liked her hair nonetheless. When they got the chance in between chasing breaths of tumultuous air, Robin would comb out Nancy’s wet hair and press kisses to her neck. All the way down her exposed spine, the way her pale skin curved around her back. The little birthmark on her left side. Robin loved it all. Nancy loved the way Robin’s hands, slightly larger than hers and knobbier at the knuckles, felt pressed into her skin. When they softly tugged at the skin on Nancy’s neck, dancing along the spare freckles When Robin’s fingers skated down her bare arms, laughing lowly into Nancy’s ear as she felt up the goosebumps she caused.

Later, hair mussed up and spread out onto pillowcases above them, Nancy tried her best to fold her body completely into Robin’s. Sometimes it felt like it was about to work - her legs to her legs, her arms clasped against Robin’s chest, Nancy’s face pressed to her collarbone. But they never got nearly close enough. It was never enough. Not for lack of effort - their fingers pulled and left marks in respective skin. There was something they couldn’t bypass. But they could get close enough.

On days where going outside was unfathomable, Nancy and Robin curled up in her bed and read to each other. Robin was especially good at doing voices for comic books they snatched from Mike’s bed (who spent most of his days at the Byers’ new house on Apple Avenue, anyway), but she didn’t have the attention span for the thick classics Nancy preferred. So Nancy read those aloud instead, and textbooks too - prepping them for college days that might never come. Learning with each other to ignore the oncoming assault outside.

When they were in the thick of it, covered in blood and sweat and faces slick with tears, Robin had found Nancy. In between family and ex-boyfriends and brothers Robin pulled her close and tried to fold them together. Nancy let her. She looked up at her with galaxies in her eyes. It was like touching a cloud. They came really, really close. The ground shook and Robin lifted up a jacket-covered arm to protect herself and Nancy, cowering underneath the shield and sticking together. Nancy’s sweaty, frantic kiss landed more on the side of Robin’s mouth rather than her actual lips. It was heaven on Earth.

And when it was finally over and Hawkins was allowed to take a breath, Robin interlocked her fingers with Nancy and stepped away from the gates of Hell. In the hospital, patched up for minor injuries and bouncing their knees in worry for the others with more life-threatening conditions, their fingers stayed interlocked. Nancy Wheeler’s bony, pale hand. Robin Buckley’s tanner, longer fingers. They mushed together in the middle. It felt almost inhumane to spilt at this point.

Walking down what used to be Main Street, showered and not as sweaty but still completely devastated, Robin pulled Nancy into her side. And she said, whispered nearly inaudibly into the strands of Nancy’s ponytailed hair:

“I’m glad it was you.” Nancy looked up from where she’d pressed her face square to Robin’s chest with a soft, innocent smile on her face. She was twenty and she felt sixteen. Time reversed in Robin’s arms and for a moment, waiting for the crosswalk light to change even though there was no chance of a car going down the street, they were kids. Idiots. Unaware. She wrapped an arm around Robin’s waist in reply and squeezed.

“I’m glad it was me, too,” Nancy agreed. Robin couldn’t stand looking into those big, brown eyes anymore, so instead she laughed and pulled Nancy in closer. They walked home no longer two separate girls but one four-legged lovesick animal. Nancy was not Nancy and Robin was not Robin. They were just two people, tow women. Going nowhere and having nothing to do. It was the first breath of fresh air they’d both taken in years.

Sleeping in had never felt so good.

#screeches from unexplainable good emotion

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