Nancy didn’t even know Robin Buckley knew where she lived, but here she is, standing on the front porch in the pouring rain in the middle of the night. She’s shifting her weight from foot to foot and fidgeting with the bottom of her oversized t-shirt.
“Steve’s out of town and…” is all she gets out before her voice cracks and Nancy opens her arms.
They sneak down to the Wheeler basement and jump every time the stairs creak, even though both Karen and Ted wouldn’t be disturbed by the entire air force flying over their house. Then, Nancy puts one of Mike’s mixtapes on and the two of them lay on the floor, listening to Journey singing, “So now I come to you with open arms” and pretending like they’re just two normal girls, having a standard sleepover.
In the morning, Nancy tiptoes upstairs with music still playing and pops frozen waffles in the toaster. They eat in silence and she wonders if this is how her brother felt every day back when Eleven was huddled in the tent against the wall that Robin’s leaning on now.
“I can’t sleep,” the freckled girl speaks after a minute, “I keep seeing that doctor with the…”
Robin trails off and bites her lip, staring at the ground instead of into Nancy’s eyes.
For her part, Nancy wants to tell her that she understands, that she still can’t close her eyes without being back in the Upside Down or seeing Will scream as the fire ripped that monster out of him or hearing footsteps running after her as she ran through the hospital hallways wondering if the last thing she’d see would be the man who sneered at her and made crude jokes about her dresses when he didn’t think she could hear.
But, for being an aspiring reporter, she doesn’t know the words to say it all without falling apart.
So, she just opens her arms and lets Robin collapse into them, then holds onto her and thinks that maybe they can fight the monsters off together- Nancy with a gun held tightly in her grip and Robin with bloodied fists clenched.
After that first night, it becomes something of a tradition for them- Robin showing up at the Wheeler doorstep, blue eyes vacant and clutching at the ends of her shirt like she doesn’t know what to do with her hands. Nancy doesn’t ask how Robin found her address, they don’t say anything and the two girls hold each other like they know each other’s secrets already.
One day, when she thanks her brother for the mix tape, he turns redder than the strawberries Holly and their mother picked and screeches, “That’s my private property, Nancy!”
So, she makes a point to hum all the songs for the rest of the day- she knows them by heart at this point anyway. She laughs when her brother accidentally runs into a doorframe because he’s so busy glaring at her.
“You are the worst,” he grumbles and then storms off to his room, probably to go mope about Will. Nancy isn’t blind- she and Jonathan have been scheming about it for ages.
But, she hums that Journey song again, thinks about Robin’s crystal blue eyes and the freckles scattered on her cheeks and she wonders.
So, Nancy Wheeler does what she does best and makes a plan.
Step 1: that night, when Robin shows up at her door, Nancy is already in her shoes, holding a picnic blanket and grabbing the other girl’s hand, leading her back out to the pick up truck in the driveway. She puts the mixtape in, turns the volume up loud and rolls her windows down.
“C’mon, Buckley. Let’s go on an adventure,” she tries to sound confident, but she’s just so nervous and she’s never been this nervous around anybody before.
(“Nothing to hide, believe what I say”)
Step 2: Robin gets back in the car and asks, “Where do you want to go?”
Nancy tells her, “Everywhere,” so they race the stars into the night until the only thing either of them knows is the song, echoing off the dark roads and it sounds like her heartbeat, there in the middle of nowhere with nothing but this girl beside her in a blue pickup truck.
(And here you are, by my side)
Step 3: They find an empty field, somewhere beyond anything Nancy’s ever seen before, but she’s ready to follow Robin to the ends of the earth, so she doesn’t say anything, just gets out of the car and unwraps the picnic blanket from where it’s pooled at her feet.
“Someone once told me the constellations were named after Greek stories,” she tells Robin after a minute, leaning on her side.
“I think I know the one about Andromeda,” Robin replies and then whispers the story to her about a girl chained to a cliff, waiting for the monsters to get her when she’s saved by someone who turns them all to stone.
Nancy wonders if Robin thinks of them when she tells it, as much as she does when she listens.
The two girls lay, intertwined, in the truck’s bed and whisper stories to each other about the stars and their lives and everything in between because maybe, just maybe those two things aren’t so different. At least, that’s what Nancy thinks when she looks over and sees those blue eyes sparkling as Robin tells a funny story about her history class sophomore year.
“And that’s why I will never, ever go to England,” the freckled girl finishes and Nancy just blinks at her because she was so lost in the melodies of her voice that she didn’t hear anything at all
“Ok,” she says after a minute and then laughs, “Ok.”
And Robin smiles at her with her entire face and Nancy thinks she’s going to explode.
Step 4: They fall asleep together listening to the fireflies and the silence doesn’t bother Nancy as much as it used to. Instead, she just listens to the girl next to her breathing softly and replays every interaction they’ve ever had, starting with, “I’m sorry. Who are you?”
There’s the banter they have on movie nights with Steve and Jonathan
(“How the hell do you think A New Hope is the best Star Wars movie? It’s most definitely Return of the Jedi!”
“Sorry, Wheeler. You’re just wrong.”
“Shut up you two,” Jonathan would snap after a while, “Some of us are trying to watch the movie.”)
And the shared task of supervising the kids when Steve’s working and Jonthan’s oogling him.
(“Dustin, you idiot! What are you, seven? You don’t eat shaving cream, dumbass!”
“You have the number for poison control, right?”
“If anyone tells me Mike is stuck in a tree one more time, I’ll never make peach cobbler ever again!”
“Nancy, your brother’s being a moron and forgot he hates climbing trees.”)
And of course, the lost nights they share where they don’t speak at all, just cling to each other and hope that’s enough, listening to the same songs on repeat that make so much sense when Nancy plays the lyrics in the background, like she’s watching a movie of their lives.
She thinks that she’s in love, because all she dreams about is those bright blue eyes and that breathy laugh and that wonderful smile while she hears their song play.
(Lying beside you, here in the dark, feeling your heartbeat with mine)
Step 4: The next morning, they wake up and do the drive all over again, but in the daylight, there’s so many stories Nancy still has to tell and so many adventures waiting to be had that she forgets to turn on the music and instead, they are each other’s heartbeats and nothing could feel more right.
Step 5: Robin pulls into a diner five miles out from Hawkins and Nancy didn’t realize that her stomach was growling until she smells the pancakes.
“My treat,” the freckled girl tells her and before she can protest, Robin’s whipping out cash from the driver’s console and walking inside.
Nancy doesn’t fight her on it, because she’s seen Robin absolutely decimate Steve in arguments before and she’d definitely get too flustered by that to remember what she was saying. So, she just follows the taller girl inside and they sit at a booth across from each other while stuffing their faces with pancakes.
“Thank you for everything,” she says, because she doesn’t know what else to say.
Robin looks up with whipped cream on her nose and Nancy leans over to brush it off, but her fingers are shaking when she pulls away and hopes that she didn’t linger for too long.
“Any time,” Robin replies and gives her that sideways grin that jumbles Nancy’s nerves.
Step 6: After what feels like eternity and only a few seconds at the same time, they’re pulling into the Wheeler driveway and Nancy leans over to place a chaste kiss on her favorite cluster of Robin’s freckles.
It’s on her left cheek and it looks like the Andromeda constellation if Nancy squints just right.
When she pulls away, she thinks (and hopes) Robin is blushing, but she doesn’t quite know.
“I’ll see you tomorrow?”
And the other girl just gives a dazed nod in response, so Nancy does a little victory dance while singing along to their song in her room, because everything is falling into place and it feels like her destiny is being written in front of her, while the rest of her life awaits and hell, she enjoys the view.
(“Wanting to hold you, wanting you near” is what she croons while she dances around her room, imagining that Robin’s dancing with her)
Step 7: Their tradition evolves into staring at the stars together and Nancy starts dragging Jonathan to the library to do more research on constellations. So far, her favorite is still Andromeda, though the tragedy of Orion comes in a close second.
And as she reads, takes notes and anticipates the late nights surrounded by so many stories, she hums to herself because she can’t get that one song out of her head.
(But now that you’ve come back, turned night into day, I need you to stay)
Step 8: The first kiss shouldn’t be so perfectly imperfect, but it is and Nancy would do it all over again (the mind flayer, the demogorgon, the mall- all of it), if it means getting to lean in and kiss Robin Buckley for infinity.
They’re laying in the bed of the pickup truck, fingers laced together and Nancy’s telling the story of the gemini when all of a sudden, she looks over and the other girl is right there. So, she closes her eyes and hopes with all that she has, prays to the stars and whatever’s out there… and when lips finally brush hers, it’s like everything she’s ever wanted and her entire destiny and… there’s no words to describe exactly what it’s like.
The only thing she can think is that damn Journey song that started all of this.
(So here I am, with open arms, hoping you’ll see, what your love means to me)
And that’s the truest thing, isn’t it?
Step 9: If you look closely enough, right next to the Andromeda constellation, you’ll see two girls dancing in the sky with the echoes of music playing on their tails, swaying quietly with the breeze and smiling like nothing else matters.
(Open arms)