Though I Try To Hide The Way I Feel Inside
It's all covered in static mostly, at least that's all Steve can register. Standing in Robin’s doorway, holding the bullet she's just lodged into his stomach.
“She never said it makes her uncomfortable you know? I just don't wanna do anything that could potentially ruin this and you’re—”
“Ruining it.” Steve finishes it for her.
“No—no Steve it’s just fucking weird. You dated my—Nancy..and it makes her uncomfortable. I really really wanna do this right.” Robin’s tone has conviction, confidence but she's not even fucking looking at him. Her teeth stuck on her nail as she stares right past him.
“You're making a choice. Her or me and it's her.” Steve knows it’s immature to dumb down an obviously difficult situation however it's not untrue. Robin makes no move to object to say Steve It’s not like that. To somehow quell these fears but it's silent. The static too has left him.
But you were mine first is an ugly thought threatening its way out. First doesn't always stick, hadn't he learned that with Nancy?
“I have to go.”
“Steve, please not like this?” She hangs onto the end of his shirt. There's no apology, no understanding smile, no music, no melody. There's leaving, that action he recognizes well enough—though he expected the only departure to be on Robin’s behalf.
He didn't expect to be the one doing the leaving.
There’s this image, this heaven he’s built where Robin picks him first. Chooses him in a crowd of people and it’s domestic and fucked because he's never loved someone like this before, this pure and unspoken but mutually accepted.
He thinks about Robin’s guilty pleasures.
KitKats. Blue soft drinks. ABBA. Carrot Cake. He wonders who she’ll share those with, who’s house she’ll sit in when her anxiety is threatening to eat her alive when the only place she's ever felt safe enough is Steve’s bathroom floor.
He thinks selfishly Nancy will never fill that hole because she’s not Steve.
“Robin. I have to go.” Steve knows better than to stay where he’s not welcome.
He's been playing out that sleepover at Robins for days now. Wondering if he hadn't asked how Nancy and her were doing, would she bring it up herself? Was he always a wedge in their relationship?
He sees the nail polish, the quiet whispers in her bathroom following their job at scoops, and now somewhere this Nancy wall built between them.
He hates thinking about the sleepovers, the drunk confessions. The way she fit so perfectly in this space he’d carved out for her.