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The squawk is loud in that specific way that only happens right before something terrible. Not the fun loud of movie nights or D&D campaigns or even panic, but the kind of noise made by people trying very hard not to think about what’s coming. Chairs scrape. Duffel bags thump against walls. Someone argues about whether a crowbar or a machete is more practical. Someone else counts bullets out loud, like numbers might keep them alive.
There hasn’t been time to linger on Will’s coming out. It happened, it was gentle and raw and brave, and then the world kept ending. The moment folded itself into the chaos like everything else does in Hawkins. Mike said the right things. Everyone did. There were nods and reassurances and hands clapped on shoulders, and then Dustin was explaining something else about wormholes and Nancy was loading guns and Murray was getting the truck ready and the world kept ending.
Mike hasn’t said much since.
Robin notices because Robin always notices. She notices patterns. She notices when someone who usually fills space suddenly doesn’t. She thinks she’s noticed something between Mike and Will, though she can’t be sure. Mike doesn’t give much away, which of course just makes her look closer. So she notices Mike standing a little too far back, hovering at the edge of conversations instead of in the middle of them. She notices the way he watches Will when he thinks no one’s looking. Not long enough to be obvious, not soft enough to be readable, just careful. Like he’s holding something sharp and doesn’t know where to put it down.
She notices when he slips out the back door.
It isn’t dramatic. He doesn’t slam anything or announce that he needs air. He just disappears between one argument and the next, and suddenly he’s gone. Robin hesitates for half a second. She and Mike Wheeler are not exactly confidants. Still, the feeling presses at her anyway. The same one that told her to talk to Steve in the bathroom stall all those years ago, even if that was helped along by a bit of truth serum. The same one that told her Will Byers wasn’t just talking about a girl when he asked her about signs that someone wants to date.
She follows.
The air is cool as the sun begins to set, damp with the late summer smell of grass and dirt. Mike is sitting on the back steps, elbows on his knees, staring out into the dark like he expects something to crawl out of it. He doesn’t jump when Robin speaks, but his shoulders tense all the same.
“Everything alright, Wheeler?” she asks lightly, like she’s asking about the weather.
Mike doesn’t look at her. “Fine. Just wanted a moment before everything goes down.”
Robin hums in acknowledgement. That tracks. She leans against the porch railing, giving him space. She’s about to leave it at that. Sometimes a moment is just a moment. Then he speaks again, abruptly, like the words escaped without permission.
“Who’s Tammy?”
Robin blinks.
She turns her head slowly, studying him now. His eyes are still fixed on the yard, jaw tight, fingers worrying at a loose thread on his sleeve. Of course he would ask that. Of course that would be the thing that sticks out of everything Will said.
“That’s what you’re thinking about?” she asks.
Mike shrugs. “He said it like everyone was supposed to know what it meant.”
Robin considers this. She gets why he's asking, outside of herself and Steve no one else could know what it meant. She wonders how Mike knew she was the person to ask. Maybe he noticed how much time she and Will have spent talking lately. Maybe he clocked the way she reacted when Will said it. Maybe he just knows, on some level, that she notices things other people don’t. Or maybe she was just the first person to speak to him since he had the question.
“You remember Tammy Thompson?” she says finally.
Mike frowns. “The bad singer?”
“Wow,” Robin says. “She worked very hard on that vibrato.”
“What does she have to do with Will?” he presses.
Robin exhales through her nose. She could lie. She could deflect. She could say it isn’t important. But Mike didn’t ask casually. There’s weight under the question, and Robin recognises it. She recognises the look of someone circling something they’re afraid to touch.
“She was my first crush,” Robin says.
Mike finally looks at her, startled. “Tammy Thompson?”
“Unfortunately,” Robin confirms. “I hardly knew her. She sat a row ahead of me in class. I decided she was perfect based on her hair and the fact that she once lent me a pencil.”
Mike snorts before he can stop himself, then looks embarrassed. Robin smiles a little.
“But it wasn’t really about Tammy,” she continues, more carefully now. “She was just the thing that made everything else make sense. The proof. The spark. Once I figured that out, the rest kind of fell into place.”
“Oh,” Mike says.
He thinks for a moment, then: “So she wasn’t your friend or anything.”
“Nope.”
“You barely knew her.”
“Barely,” Robin agrees.
There it is. The edge of the thing he’s really asking. Robin tilts her head.
“You’re not as oblivious as you seem,” she says gently.
Mike stiffens immediately. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Right,” Robin says, because pushing will only make him retreat.
Silence stretches between them. The house creaks behind them. Someone laughs too loudly. Mike scrubs a hand over his face.
“I just,” he says finally, voice low. “He’s my best friend. Even if I’ve been a lousy one sometimes. We've been best friends since kinder garden” He swallows. “He knows me.”
Robin doesn’t interrupt. She lets him keep going.
“If he felt something for me,” Mike adds, quieter now, “it wouldn’t be like that. It wouldn’t be… nothing.”
He doesn’t say hallway crush. He doesn’t say imagined. He doesn’t say one-sided. But Robin hears it all anyway. The fear underneath: if Will’s feelings were real, what would that mean? And if they weren’t, what would that mean?
“I don’t think you’re his Tammy, Mike,” she says.
Mike frowns. “I don’t understand.”
She knows he doesn’t. She chose the words that way on purpose. She leaves him suspended between meanings, unsure whether she’s saying that he isn’t the crush Will was talking about, or that he is, but that the comparison doesn’t hold. Robin and Tammy hardly spoke. Mike is Will’s childhood best friend.
“I don’t know what to say here,” Robin admits, and it’s the most honest thing she’s said all night. For once, her brain doesn’t race ahead of her mouth. For once, she doesn’t know how to explain a truth without naming it. She can’t tell Mike that she thinks he’s the person Will meant. She can’t tell him that whatever Will feels runs deeper than what she ever felt for Tammy. She can’t tell him that he wouldn’t be asking these questions if he didn’t feel something too. Those are just her thoughts, and Mike has to find his own way there.
Mike huffs a weak laugh. “Robin Buckley speechless. Never thought I’d see the day.”
“Enjoy it,” she says. “It’s rare.”
Another beat passes. Crickets chirp. The weight of everything unsaid presses down between them.
“Listen,” Robin says finally, turning to face him fully. “I have an opinion. Of course I do. I always have an opinion. But this?” She gestures vaguely between them, at the air, at the idea of it. “I can’t tell you what to do. No one can.”
Mike looks at her, searching.
“This isn’t something you solve with a conversation or a plan or a pep talk,” she continues carefully. “It’s not like killing monsters.”
“So what,” Mike says, defensive again. “I’m just supposed to… what? Sit with it?”
Robin gives a small, sad smile. “Yeah. Pretty much.”
“That sounds awful.”
“It is,” she agrees. “But it’s also kind of the point.”
Mike looks back out into the dark. His reflection in the window looks older than he feels. Tired. Confused. Not ready, but unable to unknow what he’s started to see.
“Just… don’t lie to yourself,” Robin adds softly. “Whatever that looks like for you.”
Mike doesn’t answer. He doesn’t need to. The silence says enough.
Inside, someone calls his name. Time is up. The world is still ending.
Mike stands, nods once at Robin like he’s grateful and terrified in equal measure, and heads back toward the house, carrying something new with him now. Not a realisation. Not yet.
But a crack.