Work Text:
The scent of Jonathan’s stale weed was starting to make Nancy seriously insane.
It smells like anger and resentment now, and it turns her into this volatile being. Like her emotions couldn’t be controlled, like she couldn’t pretend to be okay with his habits anymore, because it just amplified their issues everywhere else. He’d pull a crafty little joint out every time they rode in Nancy’s car, or step onto the Wheeler’s back porch late at night, and it only made her want to retaliate. His vice was smoking, and lately it’d just felt like he needed that escape from Nancy to survive being with Nancy. He wasn’t present. They didn’t have what they used to, not at all.
She’d get him back each time by picking up her own vice, a bottle of liquor, and she’d down a bunch while he was outside. Sometimes she’d put it right back in the cabinet before he saw it, but most times she’d keep it by her side to prove a point. You smoke, I drink. If he said anything, like it raised any issue at all, she’d have him in a corner anyway, because how could her drinking be a problem if his smoking supposedly wasn’t?
Tit for tat.
And Jonathan was smart, so he knew what she was getting at, and he let it boil under the surface until it was too much. They’d fight about it every other night, really. She could only pretend to be okay with his total avoidance when he was high, and he couldn’t hide how badly it bothered him that Nancy’s words would spit out meaner and meaner with each sip. She grew careless, like her words would slur more as the alcohol settled in her system and her lips loosened, letting pointed insults leak out.
He stayed downstairs anyway, on the Wheeler’s basement couch with Will in a makeshift bed on the floor. He wouldn’t smoke down there, because certainly it’d waft upstairs for everyone to smell, but he’d come back inside from the back porch and slump down with a bag of chips, usually. He’d talk with Will late into the night if he was there, which was only sometimes - he hung out in Mike’s room until late, mostly. Maybe it was a little annoying at first, not being able to share a room with Nancy as long as they were under Karen and Ted’s roof, but he found comfort in it pretty quickly when their nights ended, more often than not, in conflict.
Jonathan would storm downstairs with a slam of the basement door, not totally mindful of the people sleeping in their respective rooms, and Nancy would take the bottle upstairs to her own bed. The liquor tasted less bitter on her lips the drunker she got, and she found comfort in the way the walls kind of warped around her. The dizziness was grounding.
Robin was also grounding.
Nancy fell into the habit of calling Robin after she’d fought with Jonathan. She’d pick up the baby blue telephone and turn the dial with speed and precision, because she had her number memorized for a while now. Robin’s dad would pick up on their house rotary and she’d ask to talk to Robin, who would pick up the touch-tone phone in her room. She always made sure she heard her dad hang up the phone before she spoke.
Then, a measly, “Hey Nance, what’s up?”
They were friends now, yes, but Robin usually found herself talking to Nancy a little differently than someone else, someone like Steve. She knew Nancy called a lot lately because she had a lot to get off her chest, about Jonathan and their relationship and her life and her rage. Her confusion, the never quite knowing what it is that she wants in life. So Robin answered the phone every time with care and concern, not an instant joke or laugh.
And it wasn’t that Nancy thought Robin was a confused or lost person too, because she was pretty put together compared to herself lately. She just felt like she was a safe haven for chaos, that she could at least not judge Nancy’s permanent state of frazzle. Robin’s mind was naturally pretty frazzled anyway, so she at least understood the way Nancy’s would get when she drank.
“I feel like swallowing a bunch of pills or something. Sorry. But it’s true. Kinda. I wonder if Jonathan would even care.” The swig of Bourbon she takes makes a squish noise through the neck of the bottle, which can be obviously heard on Robin’s end. “Doubt it.”
This kind of talk makes Robin scared, makes her feel helpless. Nancy isn’t physically with her. She’s drinking by the bottle and talking about killing herself, which never gets less terrifying. It’s not all the time, but here and there she’ll mention something like that, swallowing pills or disappearing or blowing her brains out. Wishing Vecna took her instead of Barb. Robin’s stomach churns every time, her heart sinks. It makes her chest ache, so unbelievably empty.
So she’s already biting at her nails and jolted up in her bed. “Don’t say that. We’ve talked about this, you can’t base your self worth or your- your desire to live- all on Jonathan being an asshole. What are you drinking?”
Nancy does set the bottle down on the nightstand, at least for now. “Some Bourbon I found. I think it’s my dad’s. He’ll be mad later, I’m sure.”
She tries to imagine the bottle in Nancy’s hand, how she’s probably sitting on her bed using her bedroom phone, her eye bags heavy and dark under the influence. Her hair could be a little disheveled, if she was wasted enough. She imagines what the room around her would look like, though she has seen Nancy’s room, she wonders if the walls are spinning and things have a certain drunken glimmer.
“Are you in bed?”
Her heart races a little bit, and Robin’s words percolate in her head strangely. She hears it repeat, and repeat, and repeat. Like a game of telephone, they slowly warp into something else in the creation of her own mind, like maybe Robin is asking, what are you doing? What do you look like? Are you under the covers or above them?
“You’re so nosy.” The words come out incredibly slurred, a little cheeky. But Robin was serious, her question simple.
She bites her thumb nail off. “I was just wondering. So where is Jonathan?”
Nancy scoffs at the mention of his name, because the alcohol had made her forget about him though he was the topic of conversation just a moment ago. Her mind spins, distractedly, wondering what Robin would think if she saw their arguments unfold in real time. How mean Nancy could get, if her words were unwarranted or if they were completely justified. Was she the good or bad guy? Would Robin be unbiased in her judgement, or would she side with Nancy just because they’re friends?
She remembers Robin’s question, feeling the hanging silence on the phone, and realizes she still needs to respond. “He sleeps downstairs, Robin, he- we haven’t slept together in like, forever, he lives with my fucking parents-”
Robin’s cheeks heat up a little, at the mention of the two sleeping together, the idea wholly untouchable. Something to be neatly packed away in a box. They’re dating and Robin chose not to think about that, how they’d kiss, if they slept together. It made her feel dirty even though it was normal, innocently inquiring about other people in the privacy of your own mind. Sometimes when it popped up behind her eyes, it wasn’t so innocent, though. With everything she knew about what Nancy was going through, she wondered how the two blended. How they would make sense together, intimately.
“It’s like- I’m so lonely, Robin, it’s like he’s not even with me anymore. He’s a shell of a person, oh my god, like a total turtle, you know? He’s a turtle, Jonathan’s a turtle. Kay, that’s a funny word.”
She hears the bottle glug again. “Nance, you’re really drunk.”
“I mean it. I’m lonely. Why don’t you- why don’t you come over?”
Another glug of Bourbon echoes through the phone, tickles Robin’s ear. “Is a friend there what you want right now?” And maybe it’s a good idea, because she’s still thinking about Nancy’s mention of pills, and how there’s guns in her closet, how she knows Ted Wheeler is on a lot of prescription medications. How alcohol poisoning is real and someone of Nancy’s age and weight surely can’t finish a bottle of Bourbon that fast without some terrible consequence, and she shouldn’t experience that alone-
“Sure, yeah, yes. Someone to sleep with. We can get under my covers, talk about how much I hate Jonathan and you can talk me down from killing myself. Hah.”
Nancy sounds mostly incoherent, words slowly but eventually sliding their way out of her throat, their intentions kind of blurry. It’s not what Robin imagines when she thinks of sleeping with Nancy, shit talking Jonathan and keeping her from suicidal ideations for the night. She doesn’t do a whole lot of thinking about sleeping with Nancy lately, tries not to anyway, but she doesn’t know why. Just because. It’s probably something friends don’t think much about.
Robin just sighs, her nail polish is quite chipped under the wrath of her anxious teeth. “I would love to sleep with you so don’t do anything stupid to yourself. I don’t think I can leave, though, it’s like-” she glances at her alarm clock, “it’s past midnight. My dad’s pretty strict.”
Nancy huffs in disappointment. She feels the burn of Bourbon coming up high in her chest, gulping hard to keep it down. Her head falls back onto her pillow, and Robin hears the shuffle of bedsheets. “I still have guns right here in my closet.”
It makes Robin feel so indescribably sad, all of it. Just pitted. “Nance, stop joking like that. Just- let’s just stay on the phone until you fall asleep, okay?”
So they settle back in their beds, to comfier positions, but Robin’s still on edge. Nancy’s still upset and the Bourbon’s half gone. It’s sitting in her stomach like acid that Jonathan put there, he did this, she thinks, he made me like this. She finally notices the faint sound of Robin’s nail biting on the other end.
“Please don’t worry about me, I’m fine, I’m so fine. We’ll probably break up soon, we’ll break up, and, yeah-” She can’t fully put together her thoughts, but it’s there, a faint string through her mind. It’s been there for months now. A really heavy string, it felt.
“If that’s what you want, then I support you. He can’t be treating you like this, Nance, not listening to you and just- just avoiding you. You deserve someone’s full attention, always.” Robin means it, she really does. She’s thought for a long time now that they should break up. Everyone would be better off, surely.
Nancy stretches out her legs under the covers, flicking at a seam on her jeans anxiously. “Would I have your full attention? Do I?” She’s not even thinking when she asks it, she doesn’t know what she means by it. Maybe wants to know there’s someone out there, anyone at all, who really cares. Loves her for her.
She doesn’t hesitate in her reply, “Of course.”
Her drunken mind wanders curiously, thinking of lighter things. To Robin’s life, to who she has, who she cares about. It’s not just Nancy. “How is it with Vickie?” The name comes off her tongue extra slurred. Some intention behind it that Robin’s unsure of.
“She has my attention too. I care about her too. I care about all my friends. Immensely. I’m a cancer, remember?”
A particular curiosity suddenly pokes at Nancy’s dry throat, igniting the burn in her chest further. The zodiac comment goes over her drunk head. “Would you come sleep with me before you slept with her?”
She’s never told Nancy about herself. The truth about her and Vickie. She’s not sure what she means by that question, but she’s completely sober and it starts to burn in her chest, too. She doesn’t think she'll be able to eat breakfast tomorrow, the way her stomach is so sickly pitted. It’s quiet on her end for a moment. She just listens to the shuffling sounds of Nancy’s bed. She imagines maybe she untucked the bedsheets on one side for her, waiting for Robin to come over and get in them. She’d watch her sleep all night to make sure she didn’t do anything stupid, take another sip of Bourbon or some stupid pills. It sounds nicer than alone in her room right now, too.
“Yeah, but only because you’re being all suicide-watch right now.”
Nancy hums doubtfully. “Only because that?”
Robin thinks, but not long enough to make the smart decision. “Not only.”
Her breath feels oddly warm in her mouth. Her ears are hot. Robin’s not sure how Nancy has this effect on her, through a phone, in any way at all. It shouldn’t be like this. There's a guilty pang inside her when she thinks of Vickie again, just momentarily.
Nancy’s overheated too - she tells herself it’s from the alcohol. Must be. She tries to rest the phone between her shoulder and ear to shimmy out of her jeans, but it fumbles onto the mattress beside her. It takes an extended moment for her to get the jeans off, bunched up and shoved to the end of her bed with her feet, then returns to the phone. “Did you say something? I was taking my pants off, I was- the phone fell, I’m drunk-”
Robin chews her bottom lip nervously. She wishes to feel calmer right now. “I didn’t say anything. Why are you taking your pants off?”
“I’m hot, Robin. Gonna take my shirt too.”
She tries not to fixate on the sound of Nancy’s voice, how deep and languid and sultry it comes across when she’s drunk. She’s had a lot of Bourbon and it’s probably not intentional. There’s some more rustling on the other end then a thump, she assumes Nancy’s dropped the phone again in the process. She stares at the globe on her desk across the room to avoid the inevitable part coming next, where her mind’s going to draw up the image of what Nancy’s doing right now, how she’s shirtless and pantless in her bed. The bed she wants Robin to go sleep in.
“How much of that bottle have you had?” She asks, once she can hear Nancy’s heavy breath at the phone again.
She glances at the nightstand beside her, at the bottle. “Little more than half.”
Robin’s eyes widen a little, her eyebrows perked up. “Alright, you’re calling it a night soon then, yeah?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
“Did it make you feel any better?” She tries not to judge Nancy’s drinking habits, because she knows the circumstances.
“Kinda. Yeah. Like, my mind can like, think things freely. Like my- my thoughts aren’t in jail. My normal brain is a jail cell, I don’t let myself think certain things. Nope.”
Robin tries to make some sense of Nancy’s rambles. She does know she’s quite a logical, organized, oriented person. She winces at the thought of a tortured jailed Nancy, an unfree Nancy, one who can’t be herself. Her brain was a jail cell, Jonathan was a jail cell, so how did she get any freedom? It made sense that she liked to drink, then. Robin couldn’t possibly judge that. But she’s still curious, “What things?”
Nancy squirms around a bit under the covers, uncomfortably. Twitching a bit from the alcohol, follows swirly circles moving on the ceiling above her. The phone is kind of limp in her loose grip. “Things.”
The answer doesn’t necessarily satisfy Robin’s curiosity, but it still resonates. “Me too, sometimes. Maybe it’s the same things. I don’t usually say my things out loud either, for what it’s worth.”
“Drinking makes me feel like I can think them. Maybe say them. I have nobody ruling me.”
That resonates with Robin too. An uncontrolled, unruled Nancy. One that isn’t cursed with expectations. She doesn’t quite recognize a Nancy like that, but she wants to. “So say them. I’ll listen.”
Nancy spaces out and her fingers fiddle with the hem of her underwear habitually. Comfortably. Something to do with her hand while the other holds the line connecting her and Robin. While her mind is free.
“Why can I feel the words when we talk? I can’t feel Jonathan’s words. His words mean nothing.”
Robin understands. There’s a strange, unspoken deeper meaning beneath every exchange with Nancy. She’s never sure why. “I don’t know. I can feel it too.”
It’s silent for a bit, just light breathing noises. Robin continues, “Maybe we’re just dramatic, or you’re just drunk.”
“But you’re not drunk, Robin.”
“You’re right, I’m not. So I’m dramatic and you’re drunk, then. It’s a mixture.”
Nancy finds comfort in what Robin says, for some reason. Her voice, mostly. “I get really hot when I’m drunk, but I still have the covers on. It feels like it’s keeping me locked down in the bed, like I should be.”
Robin doesn’t inquire, she knows what she means. Locked in the bed so she doesn’t get up, hurt herself in the bathroom or maybe look through the guns in her closet. She’ll do what she has to so Nancy stays in bed, on the phone, close by. Since she can’t be there with her like the support system she wants to be, like the one Nancy needs.
“Yeah, good. Stay there and stay on the phone.”
Nancy’s breath hitches, almost like it’s changing the octave her voice is about to come out as. “What else?”
“I don’t know. That’s all you need to do, really. And maybe don’t have any more of the Bourbon.”
Nancy fights the rising sickness in her throat and swallows it down. Grabs the dizziness in her vision and tries to still it, control it. It just makes her more queasy. “What would,” she gulps, “would you tell Vickie?”
Robin blinks a few extra times. “Same thing.”
She thinks for a second in response. Her thoughts jump ahead of her, though, unable to be caught and contained. “I know you like her. That you’re together. I’ve seen you together.” Nancy doesn’t know why she thinks of it, why it’s insisted on popping up in her head through their whole conversation.
There’s no response back for a bit, before eventually, a breathy, “yeah.” There’s a bit of defeat in her voice, not quite relief.
“Have you-” Nancy swallows, tries to reframe her thoughts but there’s no better way to ask it, “have you thought about me that way, too?”
It doesn’t come off judgemental, or horrified, or anything Robin imagined someone’s reaction could possibly be. No disgust, no confusion. There is actually a bit of elation in her voice, like hope. Positively expectant.
She tries not to overthink her response too much. Nancy is drunk anyway. Again, she breathes lower, “yeah.”
Nancy doesn’t wait more than a second, clearly drunk. “What did you think about?”
Robin swears she’s starting to feel drunk too. Out of her mind, unable to control where the conversation is heading and wholly not expecting to have admitted what she did. “I-” She can’t say much more. It feels wrong, she feels guilty, and that maybe Nancy isn’t serious. She is under the influence, after all.
“I’ll help. Your mind isn’t free like mine is right now. I can say what I want.” Nancy slurs, and it doesn’t quite make sense on paper, but Robin gets it. Her hands are theoretically tied and Nancy’s are not.
“Okay.” Robin might regret this, but she also kind of knows she won’t. She feels a little guilty that she won’t.
“Did you think about being with me?”
Robin’s past any point, over any line now. She can’t not see this through. “Yes.”
Nancy doesn’t need time to brainstorm, as it seems she has her questions locked and loaded. “Touching me?”
Robin decides she should be just as quick, out of respect for the other girl and her apparent hastiness. “Yes.”
The breathiness of her voice through the phone sends goosebumps down Nancy’s arms, down to her right hand where her fingers are resting just below her waistband. She watches the walls move a little, feels a searing through her neck and chest.
“Me too.” Her voice comes out with a little desperation, almost a whimper. It’s unintentionally dirty, at least she thinks, and it has Robin gnawing on her lip, picking at her chin incessantly. She exhales loudly in an attempt to be calm like Nancy is. She replays those two words in her head and pretends she’s able to record it and file it away for later. To never forget what Nancy had just admitted, that she thinks of Robin in such a way.
“I’m in my bra and underwear.”
“I remember. You said the Bourbon made you hot.” Robin tries to be matter of factly, it distracts her from the reality of the situation. Eases the tension.
“Yeah. What about you?”
“Oh, I’m not, I- Well, I guess technically I am, but I have clothes on too.”
“Mm.” Nancy hums, implying something. Dissatisfied with Robin’s answer, maybe.
“I don’t know what I’m doing, I’m sorry, Nance.”
She cuts her off, “No, don’t be sorry. We’re just talking, that’s all. Just talking.”
It relieves Robin a bit, but her chest still feels tight, her lower belly swirling with something she can’t really identify. “Okay, yeah.”
“Can I keep asking you questions? Anything?”
“Yeah, yes. You can.” Robin thinks on that for a second, then nervously adds, “If it’s a yes or no question.”
That makes it a little harder for Nancy and her mostly sloshed mental state, but better for Robin. Maybe it was a little selfish.
“Okay.” Nancy’s fingers tap her own skin, fidgeting. “Have you wanted to kiss me?”
Robin’s breath is a little shaky. “Yeah.”
“How would you do it?” Nancy bites her lower lip. She tries to contain her excitement, tries not to scare Robin off.
“That’s not a yes or no.” Robin states. Successfully, it sounds as casual as she intended.
“I improvised a little.” Nancy admits, then squeaks, “please?”
Who was Robin to deny her now? She waits a bit, thinking of her answer. All the romantic movies she’s rented before swirl around in her head, the language they use, the way the characters kiss. She’d only kissed Vickie a couple times. It was normal, a little exhilarating, but mostly just normal.
She thinks of what their kisses aren’t, and just says it, “Passionate. Attentive.”
She tries to limit the words she says out loud, like a few less will somehow make all of this less incriminating. She had certainly already crept into cheating territory, and there wasn’t really a way to creep back out. She at least knew that she didn’t want to. This was worth it to her, it exceeded anything else in terms of importance. Nancy did mean the most to her.
Nancy makes a noise into the phone, like a grunt or a noisy exhale. She’s pleased with Robin’s answer, but she wants to hear more. She wants to take everything out of Robin’s mind, the secrets, the lust, and see the thoughts all splayed out. Feel them.
Her hand migrates further in her underwear. Her whole body, all of her skin, is burning hot. “Robin, my hand-” it’s intimidating, and so she wants to rephrase, but she can’t really, “my hand is in my underwear now.”
Robin’s face goes pale, at least it feels like it. She breathes in, deep, and her heart’s racing. “Oh,” is all she can get out. Nancy’s not doing anything, not yet, her hand is still and she briefly wonders if that was the wrong thing to say. To do.
“I- uh, is that- is that okay? I just-” she breathes, gathers her thoughts, “I’m so lonely, and honestly, I can’t stop thinking about you. I don’t know why. I want you to see me, to pay attention to me, to like me.”
“God, Nance, I-” Robin stops, thinking maybe she shouldn’t say any more. Like someone will hear her, like speaking it into the universe would change everything. But she needs to say it. “I care so much about you, it’s like, seriously insane. I care so much. You have my attention, like, always. I shouldn’t even look at you as much as I do.”
She chews on her thumb, legs writhing under the sheets a little, feeling uncomfortable in her body. Feeling like she has to explode. Focuses on Nancy’s noisy breathing through the phone and lets it reign in her own, grounding it.
Nancy thinks it sounds safe, like Robin’s not going to back out, like she’s not uncomfortable. She thinks she does want this. She’s always felt Robin cared for her so much more than Jonathan has. Her breathing is unsteady, “I do want you to look at me. All the time. Too much.”
“Does your door have a lock?” Robin asks, just simply. She’s trying not to dwell on what Nancy’s said, to overthink it, that she wants her to look at her. Her mind’s wandering, imagining Nancy right now, imagining her room and the door handle and where Jonathan is and if she’ll be alone the rest of the night.
“It does. I can lock it but I’ll have to get up.” Nancy slurs, her voice deeply heady. Chewing on her bottom lip.
“No, don’t get up. Stay here.” Robin replies quickly, too quick to think it over. Really, the door probably should be locked.
Some doubt swirls in Robin’s mind, like maybe they shouldn’t be doing this, shouldn’t be indulging in these kinds of insinuations with each other. She has Vickie and Nancy has Jonathan, and while maybe that all wasn’t going so well, it was something. Possibly, and apparently, not enough of something to stop this from happening. They were indulging, and Robin hated how good it felt.
Nancy’s still drunk, still following the ever-changing state of her room around her, the warped walls and dancing air. Her hand presses on herself under the fabric, just a solid single press to relieve tension. Testing the waters to see how it feels. How it’d feel with Robin’s breath and her scratchy voice coming through the phone.
She decides it’s all she wants now.
“I need you to talk, I need- can you talk? Will you?” Her voice comes off so desperate and needy, like she’s begging Robin, like she knows the girl doesn’t really want to speak specifics of their situation out loud but it’s all Nancy’s influenced mind can focus on. She wants to hear Robin say it all.
And Robin’s not sure if she would yet, if she should do that or keep her mouth shut tight, so she prods further, “What should I say?”
Nancy’s teeth release her own swollen lip. “Whatever you want. Whatever you think I would want to hear.”
It’s almost frustrating how they’re dancing around things, like they’re talking about so much yet so little. It’s also exhilarating, Robin thinks, and she doesn’t want it to end. She wants to keep implying little nothings full of meaning until Nancy unravels, until she’s fed her all she needs.
She contemplates for a minute, running through some words in her mind. It’s mostly just clusters of adjectives that are more distracting than helpful. She takes a different approach instead. “So, your- okay. Sorry. Let’s say your door is locked, even though it isn’t. Then what would you do?”
Nancy thinks of all the times she’s done that before, locked her door and crawled under her sheets in the darkness of her room to find some comfort within herself. Within her imagination. She exhales, and it’s laced with drunken warmth that Robin won’t feel through the phone. “I would get back in bed like I am now. Touch myself and imagine it was you.” The alcohol was responsible for her skipping ahead a bit there, impatiently.
She hears a little choking sound through the phone, like a failure to swallow smoothly. Robin tries to add that sentence to the mental file where she’s supposedly recording these confessions from Nancy to review later. It distracts her and she realizes she hasn’t said anything yet. “How,” ends up being all she can squeak out. She wants to hear more.
Nancy’s fingers are still pressing, but harder now, channeling warmth and a dull buzz through her stomach. She grips the phone harder to compensate, to release the pressure of how much she really wants. “Under my underwear. Just touching, just- with my whole hand. On myself.” Robin’s quiet on the other end, but clearly affected by the rhythm of her breathing, and Nancy decides to share more for that beautiful hitched breathing to never end. “I imagine you would touch me nicely.”
She finds an out. “Nicely?”
Nancy hums back, “Mhm. Attentive. Like you said.”
Her touch has extended and progressed now, suddenly needing to rub, to have motion and speed. Her hips swing in low circles and her hand moves back and forth. Up and down, widely. Robin can hear movement through the phone, and she wishes she could see and understand every motion, every detail of Nancy.
“I’d like to be attentive, yeah.” Still keeping her words short, thinking up what else she can say. What adheres to these rules weighing over her head. “I could do that for you.”
Nancy groans, needs more. “You’d want to touch me?”
“Yes.”
“Naked?”
A pause, then, “Definitely.”
She touches herself how she’d really want to now, rushed and hard and targeted. Robin hears it through the phone, the motions. It makes her stomach roar with need, want, curiosity, heat, imagination. “I would want to make you feel good.” Robin musters up some courage. Finds it a little easier than she thought. “I wish I was there, Nance, fuck,”
Nancy relishes in the way Robin is starting to let go. Imagines what she might look like on the other end - touching herself too, maybe, or frozen in time with how stumped Nancy has made her. “I told you to come over.”
Robin’s heart skips again. Thrums hard. “I know. I wish I could.”
Nancy had something she was gonna say, a quick plan crafted up on her fast paced mind-track, but it withered away once her hips start bucking and she’s chasing a much more important track. “Fuck, I’m gonna-”
“Gonna?” Robin asks, and she thinks it comes out sounding a little dumb. Nancy isn’t really paying attention to that.
“Tell me I can, please, I’m-” she whines, hand working fast and the phone pressed hard against her hot ear.
“Let go, baby, please.” The name just slips out. It’s not Robin’s fault - Nancy is obviously hypnotizing her.
She finishes, dramatically, harshly, cursing under her breath. Body limp in her sheets, panting into the phone for Robin to hear. She remembers being called baby just now and is going to hang on to that, to never forget. Robin’s just as disheveled, but mentally, trying to ground herself with teeth on her nails.
A minute or so goes by with no words, just breathing and thinking. Nancy feels like their thinking can be quite loud between the two of them, almost like its own language. “Robin,” is all she can think to say.
“Nancy.”
She’s hit by a brick of sadness, a sudden sinking feeling in her chest. Robin isn’t there, and she's not hers. “We- we belong to other people, don’t we?”
“Not necessarily.”
“You’re right. Can I- can I help you out, too?” Her teeth return to her bottom lip, labored breathing out of her nose. She waits for Robin, for her to say yes, so she can return the favor. So they can keep living this moment forever.
“I just want you to stay on the phone with me. I won’t sleep ‘till I’ve heard you already are.” Robin turns on her side, tries to melt into the mattress some more.
“Only because I’m on your suicide-watch?”
“Not only.”