Look what I built

Isn't it beautiful?

Let's burn the whole thing down.

It's hard enough trying to keep it up

I'd rather put it in the ground

- Motherfolk

February 12, 1994 - Boston, Massachusetts

Nancy is good in a crisis.

It's one of her defining traits, as far as Robin is concerned, or maybe just as far as Robin's perception of Nancy is concerned. Robin has certainly dedicated quite a bit of her concern to Nancy, and how could she not?

Nancy is interesting.

Interesting to look at (obviously), interesting to observe, interesting to do things with.

Robin likes doing things with Nancy, likes experiencing in real-time the ways their differences intersect like puzzle pieces. She likes the way Nancy's pieces fit alongside hers.

Like today.

Objectively, Robin should be freaking out about this interview, and she is, sort of, but not nearly as much as she would be if Nancy wasn't with her, guiding her through it.

It's the exact same phenomenon that had guided Robin through the Upside Down nearly eight years ago, this feeling of a path showing itself within the garbled mess swirling around in her brain. Robin's seventeen-year-old self would definitely hate to see her now, to see the way looking at Nancy Wheeler is like looking at the answers to every question she's ever had.

Nancy drags her to the Boston Public Library, writes out a resume for Robin basically from memory (which, truth be told, is way hotter than it should be), and then brings her back into the biting, February cold, back onto the T, and back to her apartment where she makes them both lunch while she fires question after question at Robin and coaches her on how to answer better.

"Jesus, Nance," Robin says after a particularly grueling back and forth about her thoughts on preserving history, "You work for a newspaper — how the hell do you know all this stuff?"

Nancy hides a smile as she peers into the pot of pasta she's boiling.

"One of my roommates works in HR," she replies, "So she does hiring and recruiting and stuff like that, and sometimes she helps her friends prep for interviews — oh, speaking of, she's actually moving to Vermont at the end of the month so she needs to sublet her room until our lease is up. I—"

She pauses, and there's something a little nervous in her eyes as she returns to the counter and collects the tomatoes Robin had been chopping.

"I know we haven't talked about this yet, but if you get the job — and if you wanted to, obviously — you could live here. Rent's not bad and my roommates are nice. I know it's maybe, like, really soon from, like, a relationship perspective, but we'd still have our own rooms and our own spaces. Don't feel obligated to say yes, obviously, I just, y'know…Boston's cost of living is only getting worse, so-"

And then it hits Robin like a freight train — Boston.

The Museum of Fine Arts is in Boston.

This job is in Boston, and if Robin gets it, she'll need to be in Boston too, and right away.

Getting this job means returning to Washington on Sunday like she was always going to, but instead of falling back into the same old routine of her life, she'll be packing her belongings, quitting her job at Books and Balderdash, breaking her lease with Steve —

Steve.

Shit, if Robin gets this job, she has to leave Steve, her best friend, her person, the dingus who'd let himself get tortured nine years ago because he'd known Robin and her big mouth would've gotten into even deeper shit with those Russian goons than he had.

And suddenly she doesn't want the job too much anymore.

Robin feels like she's losing control. This isn't how her trip to Boston was supposed to go. She's supposed to be letting Nancy spend three days dragging her around the city and letting herself pretend that it's her real life. She wasn't supposed to confront how badly she wants it to be her real life because it would mean facing the idea that she's willfully ignoring so many important facets of her life she's dissatisfied with for fear of losing the things she has that are good.

It would mean facing the idea that she might've never truly been happy with her life aside from the time she spends with Steve.

She can't continue relying on her high school best friend for her happiness anymore. There has always been an expiration date on that despite Robin's furious determination to pretend there isn't, but since Steve and Eddie became SteveandEddie, it's approaching far too swiftly for her to ignore. SteveandEddie will have a life together someday that Robin won't be entitled to. It's a life that Robin won't have a right to in the way now can raid Steve's closet and steal the last few bites of food off his plate. It's a life with family and children and a home and their own version of marriage, and countless other elements of life that Robin won't be able to gain automatic access to just by being Steve's best friend. It's a life of Steve's where Robin has shifted from the center to the mere periphery, and suddenly that prickly feeling Robin used to get when Steve would go on and on about dates with pretty girls in the middle of those shifts at Family Video is back like it had never left.

Maybe that's why the prospect of this job is so scary.

Because for the very first time she's recognizing an opportunity that looks like what she wants to do, that feels like her calling, and there's a voice in her head yelling, screaming, for her to throw it away because chasing it would mean confronting this childish, unsustainable, naive need of hers to stick with Steve.

"Robin," she hears Nancy say, and there's something in her tone that suggests she's been repeating herself for a while.

"I need to call Steve," Robin says, and there must be something manic (or a little feral, as Eddie has described her before) in her eyes because Nancy doesn't argue, just pushes Robin back upstairs, yanks at the corded phone in the hallway until it's stretched into her bedroom, and then closes Robin in by herself.

Robin leans against the door while she dials the number for her own apartment, praying Steve and Eddie are being their usual boring old-men selves and hanging around at home, and while it begins to ring, she slides down until she's sitting on the hardwood floor with her knees drawn up to her chest.

The third ring gets cut off as the phone in Tacoma is picked up, and then she hears, "Hello — Steve and Robin's place."

"Eddie!" Robin exclaims, "Can you put — wait, actually…"

She pauses, her mind running a mile — no, two miles — a minute.

"You okay, Buck?" Eddie asks humorously.

"Eddie — please tell me you'd be okay moving in with Steve. I don't know if you guys had a plan or anything, and I guess you haven't even been dating that long, but-"

"What are you talking about?"

"Eddie, you have to promise me you won't say anything to Steve. Promise me."

"Uh...that depends, Rob."

"Ugh, god, you're so annoying. It's not bad, and I'm literally gonna tell him now."

"Tell him what?"

Robin exhales.

"Look — it's a really long story, but I'm interviewing for a job here literally tomorrow and I have a terrible feeling I'm gonna get it and it's, like, my dream job so obviously I have to take it, but it'd mean I'd have to move to Boston, like, now, and Steve obviously can't come with me because of school and the thought of leaving him is making me want to barf and the only thing that could possibly make it not completely terrible is if you took my place on the lease."

Eddie is strangely quiet for a moment, and then his voice is uncharacteristically stiff when he says, "Did you go on this trip for the interview?"

"Oh, fuck off," she counters, finding she's actually a bit offended, "I know exactly what you're accusing me of and there's no need for you to be Steve's knight in shining armor over it."

"Hey — it's not like he'd let himself be upset about it if-"

"No, I obviously did not plan this," Robin cuts him off, "Nance had to drag me halfway across the city just to make me a resume. I'm not prepared in the slightest."

Eddie pauses

"Well, fuck, okay…wait — so what are you asking me?"

"I'm asking you to tell me that you'll move in with Steve if I get this job and have to leave him. The thought of him being stuck there by himself sucks so bad it's convincing me to not do the interview and I need to do this interview."

"I mean, yeah, Jesus Christ, obviously I'll move in with him — might do it whether you get the job or not, honestly. I don't know how much longer I can survive waiting fuckin' months between-"

"Alright," Robin stops him again, sensing Eddie is headed in a direction she has absolutely no interest in, "Gross. I do not need to hear about what you guys have been getting up to while I'm gone."

"Get your mind out of the gutter, Buck," Eddie retorts, "For all you know, I was gonna say between seeing his pretty face, but now that you mention it, I am learning that he's a delightfully loud lover — did you-"

"Okay, never mind. You're making this shit way easier now. Put Steve on the phone."

Robin hears Eddie's maniacal laugh, and it only takes a few moments for the phone to change hands.

"Hey Rob," Steve says, "How's Boston?"

"Uh…good. Look — so, this is so fuckin' weird but I sort of ended up with a job interview…tomorrow…for a curatorial position at the MFA."

Steve is silent for a second, then he lets out a snort.

"Holy shit, you are not qualified for that."

Robin lets out a surprised laugh.

"I know. Thank you! That's what I've been saying, but it…it's actually pretty fucking cool. I'd get to travel and work with all sorts of different artists and-"

"No, it…it sounds like your thing," he says, "That's really cool."

"Yeah…I-I know. I'll tell you everything when I'm back on Sunday but, y'know, I wanted to loop you in, I guess, 'cos if I get it I'll have to, like, move to Boston, like, soon. Like, soon soon."

Steve is quiet.

"Well, yeah. Obviously," he eventually says, "Yeah, that-that'll be weird, but, y'know, good. Good weird."

And Robin's heart starts to shatter because he truly is the best person she's ever known. She's certain that, if the roles were reversed, she would be scrambling, wracking her brain for any excuse that would prevent him from leaving. Yet, here he is giving her nothing but support.

"Yeah," she manages, "I figured, well, we've talked some about going to Boston when you're done with school anyways, so maybe I just go a little early and, like, scope out the scene, and in the meantime, you could maybe ask Eddie if he wants to move in or something."

"Yeah," Steve replies, sounding optimistic, "Yeah, it'll all be good. I fuckin' love you, man, and this gig sounds perfect."

Robin nods as waves of relief start to roll in.

"Yeah, um — oh, also, me and Nance sorta made things official. I mean to tell you earlier, but it sorta got lost in…all this."

"And look at that — now you're immediately moving to Boston. So was all that ranting about not being a U-Haul lesbian for nothing, then?"

"Oh, shut up," she rolls her eyes, "I gotta go — Nancy's been like a drill sergeant with this interview prep. I'm surprised she even allowed me a phone call."

"Okay," Steve laughs, "Good luck, Robin, seriously. Call me after the interview, 'kay?"

"Okay," she repeats, "Love you."

"Love you."

The line goes dead and Robin lets out a long exhale.

She feels a little better about everything, actually. That's kind of just Steve, though, the budding psychologist that he is. She still hates the idea of leaving him, but now that the roiling storm in her brain has begun to settle, she can acknowledge how that has less to do with thinking Steve couldn't bear to part with Robin (he's a big boy — only a few years away from thirty, which Robin finds ridiculous despite being right behind him — and completely capable of fending for himself in Washington for a few years even if Eddie wasn't jumping at the opportunity to join him) and more about Robin thinking she couldn't bear to part with Steve.

With the phone in hand, Robin leaves Nancy's bedroom and replaces the phone on its hook in the hall before heading back downstairs to find Nancy in the kitchen just sliding two bowls of Caprese salad across the kitchen island.

"Hey," she says, "Everything okay?"

"Yeah," Robin replies, knowing she's answering mostly truthfully, "All good."

"Great," Nancy smiles, a degree of finality in her tone, "So I thought we'd break for lunch and then get back to the interview prep for a bit longer."

"Seriously?" Robin groans, "I really think I'm set."

"Oh c'mon, just a little longer," Nancy urges her, "This is a big deal, and besides, we'll have to leave for the North End before long so there's an end in sight. I promise I won't talk interview stuff at dinner, and I really want to take you to Mike's Pastry."

And again, just when she'd thought she might be in the clear, Robin is hit with another freight train-like realization, this one ten times the magnitude of the first.

"It's, like, the one touristy thing I indulge myself in," Nancy is still saying, not noticing the way Robin is rooted to the spot, frozen in place.

Because Robin has been hiding something from Nancy. She's been hiding something from everyone for years, and if she really does get this job, if she really does move to Boston, she won't be able to continue hiding it anymore.


November 25th, 1990 - Tacoma, Washington

Robin and Steve's last Thanksgiving break ever was a morose one.

Mike had disappeared less than forty-eight hours before the holiday, after wrapping his dad's car around a tree and being dragged home by Hopper — apparently completely uninjured albeit still wasted — in the dead of night. Now, it'd been five days of radio silence from Mike, five days of the opposite from the rest of the party as they checked in with each other, passed along messages, and tried to determine where Mike could have gone.

Steve was upset. He'd watched all those kids grow up, practically, so it was natural for him to be hit hard by stuff like this. They might all be adults, legally speaking, but Robin knew Steve still looked at Mike (and Lucas and Max and Dustin and the rest of them) and saw the same dorky pre-teen he'd kept alive for a few years. Obviously, whatever happened with Mike was going to feel like some kind of failure to Steve whether or not it actually was.

Robin was also upset about Mike. They'd been close, kind of, and in the aftermath of destroying Vecna, they'd become something like friends. After Robin moved away for college, that closeness quickly faded, and then Steve followed her to Washington, and then the rest of the party began to graduate and move on, and then Mike was the last one left in Hawkins.

That must have sucked. Maybe Robin understood why he went off the rails a little bit, and he certainly had.

Anyways, Robin and Steve's senior year Thanksgiving break wasn't shaping up to be her favorite out of the four, unless things turned around in its last ten hours — they wouldn't, though; it would be the same sporadic phone calls from various party members hoping for updates, just like the last three and a half days had been.

"Do you think the lab is still listening to us?" Steve asked after one such phone call.

"Uh…I wasn't aware they were ever listening to us," Robin replied, "Why?"

"I dunno. That was the third time today the phone rang and whoever's on the other end basically just hung up, like, immediately."

Robin's eyebrows flew up.

"Really? That's fuckin' weird."

"Right?"

Robin ran a hand through her hair, the wheels in her brain furiously turning.

"Like, have we really considered the possibility that maybe this has to do with all that stuff?" she asked, "Nance always said the demogorgons could smell blood, so maybe — actually, no, that doesn't make sense 'cos Eddie said he wasn't hurt — but maybe-"

"Robin," Steve cut her off, shaking his head, "It's not…it's not all that. It's not. The gates are closed. He's just, like, depressed or something."

Robin wanted to press further, but something on Steve's face, something hurt and nervous and just plain sad, stopped her.

"Yeah," she nodded, "You're probably right."

Steve actually wasn't around the next time the phone rang, finally deciding to abandon his post long enough to take a shower, so Robin picked up.

"Hey, this is Robin."

There was a beat of silence, then, "Hey."

It took a moment for Robin to process the voice, for her brain to run it through her mental directory of all the voices she knew, but when she found a match —

"Holy shit — Mike?"

"Uh…hey," he repeated.

"What the fuck — where are you? Everyone's losing their goddamn minds trying to figure out where you fucked off to."

"I've been calling," he replied defensively.

"Where, here?"

"Yeah."

"When…Jesus Christ, were you the one hanging up on Steve?"

He hesitated.

"Yeah."

"Michael — you had him thinking the fucking lab was spying on us again!"

"Wha- it's not my fault Steve's a panic! You weren't ever answering!"

"Me?" Robin exclaimed, "Why me?"

"Because I need you to do something for me."

"What?"

"I…I need you to do something for me."

"Yeah…you said that already."

"I need you to not tell anybody where I am."

"Done," she replied immediately, "Easy, considering I have no idea where the hell you are, and neither does anybody else."

"No — I need you to, like, know where I am, but not tell anyone."

And Robin found she didn't have some snappy retort to fire back.

"What?"

"I just-I need time," Mike said, and there was something desperate in his voice that Robin hadn't heard since they were deep in the Upside Down together, "But I just keep thinking about — what if…I just need you to tell me if anything happens. Anything big."

"Big like what?"

"Big like the Upside Down coming back," he replied, "Or like if someone gets sick or…I dunno. Things like that. And I'll just make sure that…I'll make sure you know where to call — and if this ever isn't your number anymore, y'know, let me know, okay?"

"Yeah," Robin nodded, ignoring the way her palm was sweaty against her tight hold on the phone.

"And you have to promise you won't tell anybody else where I am — including Steve."

"Okay."

"Promise?"

"Yeah, I…I promise."

"Okay, I'm gonna go."

"Alright — wait, Mike?"

"Yeah?"

"Be safe, okay?"

The line went dead.


February 13th, 1994 - Boston, Massachusetts

Robin is a truly awful person.

She's a bad, bad person because she says things, does things, knowing it'll hurt people she cares about and she doesn't let it stop her.

Robin has been in contact with Mike since five days after he disappeared from Hawkins, Indiana without a trace back in November of 1990.

(Well, not completely without a trace because Robin always knew where he was. Mike made sure Robin always knew where he was and she made sure no one else would find out).

She never really knew why Mike had picked her. She knew why he didn't pick other people, like Steve or Dustin who couldn't keep secrets like that for the life of them, but there were plenty of other party members who'd have done it just as well as Robin had, but he picked her.

Mike picked her, and she had kept his secret for him.

Robin is good at it — keeping secrets. She thinks that people don't always expect that of her, given just…who she is, which is fair enough. She isn't exactly a paradigm of tact and discretion in every other facet of her being. Maybe she wasn't supposed to be good at keeping secrets but it's just something that comes with the gay in a small conservative midwestern town territory by necessity. Everyone has their shit, she knows, and everyone needs their confidante.

When Mike had approached Robin (when he called her from an unknown number in an unknown location), when he held out his secret and asked her to share the weight of carrying it, Robin thought of Steve. Steve had been her confidante. Steve had been the first person she ever told her own big secret to, and he'd held onto it for her for as long as she'd needed him to. She'd desperately wanted to be that for someone else, and she thought she might get to when Steve figured out that he too was queer, but he was far more open and comfortable with it than she'd ever been and never asked that of her.

When Mike approached Robin asking for something she herself had once so dearly needed, she couldn't help but say yes, and when her mind inevitably drifted back to Nancy, she pretended it hadn't.

Robin pretended she knew nothing while she spent years watching Nancy hurt and worry over his disappearance. Robin pretended she understood exactly how Nancy felt while she mourned the loss of her relationship with her little brother. Robin offered Nancy comfort as she placed blame onto herself for Mike's choice to disappear, all the while knowing full well that Mike was…well, Mike was doing what Mike was doing.

Robin is selfish. She's selfish for trying to have things both ways, to be there for both Mike and for Nancy when doing so meant that she couldn't — or rather wouldn't — be fully honest with either. It was selfish and it was wrong, and to make matters worse, the only reason she's having these thoughts now, the only reason this situation is suddenly plaguing her after years of being unbothered by it, is because it's suddenly become inconvenient for Robin. Never mind Mike's suffering and Nancy's mourning — this just got tough for her.

And because Robin's pretty sure she's got nothing left to lose, she'll admit that if it weren't for the arising potential of moving to Boston, the arrangement she's struck with Mike wouldn't have crossed her mind even once. The way she's betrayed Nancy's trust, the rest of the party's trust, Steve's, who had taken everything with Mike practically as hard as Nancy had, wouldn't have been spared a second thought if it weren't for the job interview.

The interview went well.

It went really well, actually, aside from how she'd opened it with nearly ten whole minutes of commentary about how The Scream had been stolen right out of a Norwegian museum the day before, and when it was done, Robin left the museum and found Nancy in a coffee shop down the street.

"How'd it go?" Nancy asked as she closed the book she'd been reading.

"I was, uh — yeah, well…I got the job, so…good."

"Oh my god — Robin! That's amazing! I'm- holy shit, that's — I'm so proud of you! You…why don't you look happy about this?"

"Nancy…I-" she stops herself, then shakes her head as she sits down in the wooden chair across from her girlfriend — probably not gonna be her girlfriend for much longer, though, if she's being realistic, "I have to tell you something."

Nancy's eyebrows fly up, and Robin can see on her face the way she's trying to figure out for herself what Robin needs to say. She'll probably succeed too, Robin knows. It's sort of inevitable with Nancy, and sometimes Robin enjoys that about her but right now it's just making her nervous.

Maybe she should just come out and say it, then, so Nancy won't get to piece it together before Robin can say it for herself, and Robin really does want to say it for herself.

And then she has the wild thought that maybe she just won't tell her at all.

After all, she's lived with Steve for the entire duration of her arrangement with Mike, and she's positive that Steve has no idea. There's no reason why she wouldn't be able to do the same in Boston.

(She's aware of how that mostly hinges on Mike's habit of compulsively hanging up when anybody besides Robin answers the phone, and that's iffy enough with Steve — she doesn't know if she'd be able to handle knowing he was doing that to Nancy).

No, that whole train of thought is a cop-out, because the prospect of that outcome and the way it would inevitably blow up in everyone's faces is something Robin can only find appealing now because it exists in a distant, nebulous future. It's more appealing than the option that's right in front of her face precisely and only for that reason, but if she stacked them against each other, if she had to press a button to enact one option and immediately face the fallout, she knows which one she'd pick.

Unable to look Nancy in the eyes, she lets her head drop down so her forehead rests on the wooden tabletop.

"Robin…what?" Nancy asks, sounding somewhat confounded.

Robin takes a shaky inhale.

"I know where Mike is," she forces out, knowing her voice is muffled, knowing Nancy probably didn't hear completely her, but she had to get the words out once to be able to say them again.

"What?" Nancy repeats.

Robin lifts her head and looks at Nancy's hairline, unable to lower her eyes the short distance to meet Nancy's own.

"I…I know where Mike is."

Nancy stills, her lips parting. She furrows her eyebrows as her gaze shifts to some spot just over Robin's shoulder. Robin knows she's not actually looking at anything. What she's doing, Robin knows, is processing. She's puzzle-piecing her thoughts and her opinions, presumably, if Robin were to guess, to tear her to shreds.

"W-well," Nancy stammers, meeting Robin's eyes again, "where is he?"

"I can't say," Robin shakes her head, her head once again falling into her arms folded on the table, "I promised I wouldn't say."

"What?"

"I — he calls me in Washington to let me know how to reach him if-if-if, like, the Upside Down comes back or someone dies or some other shit totally hits the fan," Robin forces a laugh, attempting to ease the tension with even a modicum of humor but she can tell in an instant that it doesn't land the way she hoped it would.

"For how long?" Nancy demands.

"Since —" she pauses while she manages to lift her head and inhale a shaky gasp. She hadn't been breathing, Robin realizes, "Since right after he —"

Robin stops again and shakes her head. She can feel herself shrinking, feels herself getting smaller and smaller in her seat as wave after wave of shame and embarrassment and regret and guilt wash over her, seeping through her skin and leaching into her bloodstream and coursing through her with every pounding beat of her heart.

Nancy jolts back in her chair, the metal legs squealing against the cement floor.

"I have to go," she says as she stands up, shaking her head.

Nancy takes several steps towards the door before Robin can even react, but then she pauses and doubles back.

"Stay here," she commands, her face hard, "I'm serious. Do not try to get back to mine without me. I'll come back."

Nancy weaves through the line of customers waiting to order their coffee, and then she disappears.


lyrics are from Motherfolk's Head Over Water. upbeat songs that are actually so depressing are v robin-coded if you ask me

author notes:
1. boston's north end is our little Italy. think old, pretty, narrow streets, lots of brick, freedom trail, and a bazillion Italian restaurants
2. mike's pastry is a (you guessed it) pastry shop in the north end famous for their cannolis. definitely a boston tourist trap, but actually so so worth the hype
3. edvard munch's the scream was stolen from a museum in Oslo on february 12, 1994. three months later, it was recovered undamaged at a hotel forty miles away