Chapter Text
Inevitably, the baby woke up in the middle of the night, forcing Robin to pull something on and shuffle from her bedroom to his. When she woke in the morning, he was fast asleep on her chest, his skin smooth and soft against hers. She cupped his head in her hand and took in that sweet baby smell, kissing the top of his head. After a few minutes, she pushed herself up and put Barry in his sling so she could feed him while she made breakfast. Some simple eggs and sausage would do.
She was scrambling the eggs when Nancy came stumbling out of bed, hair frizzy and dark lines under her eyes. She pushed herself up onto her toes for a kiss and took the fork from Robin so she could sit back as she nursed the baby. An old song was playing on the small radio which sat on the countertop, something that their parents had probably slow-danced to at prom. Robin sank into the couch with a sigh and looked down at the baby, suckling at her breast without a care in the world. It had been a month since she had pushed him out of her body and it was no less weird now than it had been in the moment. At the same time, though, it had become her new normal and it was a normal that she liked. It was peaceful and domestic. She wished that every morning could be like this and it very well could.
Nancy looked especially beautiful in the morning light. There was just something about the way the light hit her hair that seemed to cast her in this gentle glow, her profile sharp with her angular jawline and twitchy nose. It was hard to imagine that she had not always been so central to Robin’s life, that there was ever a time when they had not loved or even knew each other.
Robin put Barry in his car seat and buttoned up when breakfast was ready. Nancy brought it over and sat beside her, but Robin could not pull her gaze from her face. She felt her ring on her finger and was almost afraid that she would wake up at any moment. Nancy looked up at her.
“What?”
“Nothing. Just taking in the view.”
Nancy smiled that sheepish smile of hers, stirring her eggs.
They switched on the TV, but it was a slow news day. It didn’t seem like Nancy was missing much of her day off. Robin would be going back to work soon and she would be bringing Barry with her because she could not bear the thought of leaving him with some weirdos at a daycare until 5 in the evening. The bathroom at the store had one of those changing stations and Uncle Steve would be there to help out, and it was really only hopping for a few hours on Friday afternoons. She knew that it could work and it would have to. Weirdos aside, they couldn’t really afford daycare at the moment anyway.
“What did you want to do today?”
Nancy shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe we could have a picnic. It’s a really nice day out.”
“We should get takeout for dinner. Treat ourselves.”
“I could go for some pizza, maybe a little root beer.”
Robin nudged her. “Looks like the trailer park is starting to rub off on you. Not so prissy now, huh?”
“Oh, shut up.”
Sometimes, Robin wished that they had fallen in love back then, back when Robin was more rebellious and Nancy was more pretentious. It could have been a wild and steamy romance, but she cherished the memories they had made together in this universe. If they had fallen in love back then, they wouldn’t have the shared trauma to bond them in such a powerful way. Maybe it would have gotten out at some point and it would have become a painful memory that they just tried to forget. It really wasn’t worth thinking about. Robin couldn’t and wouldn’t change a single thing that had happened to her.
***
It was a quiet spring day. The sun was shining, the birds were singing, the breeze was flowing, and the people were smiling. Nancy sat on a blanket outside the library with a book to pass the time, occasionally glancing down at Robin and Barry.
They sat in the shadow of a tall tree, its branches bobbing gently in that flowing breeze. Robin’s head lay in her lap, Nancy’s fingers running through her shaggy hair. Barry was fast asleep in his seat and Robin had drifted off at some point, both exhausted from the many late night feeding sessions. Nancy reached under the canopy and felt Barry’s tiny fingers, his chest rising and falling gently.
Nancy had never really been happy until she met Robin. For the longest time, she had forced down whatever feelings she thought she might have had for other women, her transition already enough of a burden to carry. But, on that one fateful night, it had hit her in an instant like a freight train and she lunged in for a kiss, terrified of what might come of it and relieved of what did. It felt so freeing, even if they had to keep it hidden for a time, but there was no use in hiding it now. She was just glad that it had not caused them any grief.
She wondered what the future held. Vecna was bound to return at some point, but he had shown his weaknesses last year and they knew how to exploit them. After that, they would have their whole lives ahead of them. Maybe she could get a job at one of the big papers in Indianapolis or Chicago, or maybe they would take the leap and move out to Seattle to get away from it all. She hoped that Barry would end up like Robin, energetic and intelligent and compassionate, maybe with her many freckles and oddball smile. A simple domestic life was all she wanted.
Robin had a small smile on her face as she slept. The lines in her face were more pronounced and her dull skin seemed flush in the sunlight. It was nice to see her getting the rest that she deserved, always so jittery and anxious. She pushed back the canopy a bit to make sure that the baby was still asleep, studying his little features. She would be something like thirty-eight when he graduated high school and not even forty-five when he graduated college. She could very well be a grandmother before she was fifty. It was bizarre, but they certainly weren’t the youngest teen parents in the world.
She held up her hand and rubbed her wedding ring with her thumb, a band of smooth silver. She had always thought herself to be more mature than most people her age, especially back when she was a genuine priss, and this was the icing on the cake. She wondered how Tommy and Carol were doing; they had always been exceptionally horny and she was sure that, with little time for things of that sort, they were starting to feel the pressure. Hopefully, they wouldn’t have to see each other until the reunion in 1991.
Maybe it was just the peace and quiet, but Nancy felt hopeful about the future, more than she usually was. Now that the gang was back together, they should be able to coordinate a united plan of attack when the moment arose. After the 1986 flare up, they had all been reminded of just how much they stood to lose.
It all felt like a bad dream when she looked back on it. It had already been a whole year, the longest gap between said flare ups, and so much had changed in that time. Robin was a central aspect of her life now and she had not realized what she was missing until she had it. Robin’s warmth, emotional and physical, had filled a hole inside her and sealed the cracks in her armor. She had someone to catch her when she fell.
Their life was not perfect, but she was truly satisfied with where she was in her life. They had their families and Steve and Vickie and Dustin and the Byerses and the Hoppers and the Sinclairs, all the help they could ever need. She had a wife and a son who she loved more than anything and, though she may not have gone to college like she wanted, what she had was so much more fulfilling.
Setting aside her book, Nancy grabbed her sandwich from the bag and bit into it as she stroked Robin’s hair. She felt the sunlight on her face and smiled.