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“Can I sit here?”
Will looks up, almost too lost in thought to notice someone standing in front of him.
Robin. He hadn’t spoken to Robin properly since getting back to Hawkins and now stuck in the radio station, it was inevitable.
Robin takes the initiative and sits down next to Will, turning her attention to him.
“Hi.”
“Hey.”
A moment of silence washes over the both of them.
“Okay. This is going to sound crazy-” Robin begins, stringing her hands grasping for the words to come together.
“Crazy?” Will glances outside, attention elsewhere.
“It’s going to sound so fucking weird. I nearly went to your funeral.”
Will’s attention is drawn back to Robin, confusion etched over his face.
What did Robin mean? He was a random 12 year old boy who went missing, why would Robin Buckley of all people nearly go to his funeral?
Robin continues, “I thought it could be a place where I belonged, and I was deep in the self-pitying phase of finding out who I was so… and then knowing all those rumours.”
Will tenses under her words, Robin quickly backtracks scooching closer to Will.
“This is sounding like shit. Sorry… Ok, right. I was in the wallowing self-pitiness of teenagehood, and I thought we were the same. We are the same.”
“What?” Will had never spoken to Robin properly before, and if this was the first real conversation, he was completely out of depth.
“We’re still the same people then as we are now. Just older?” Robin starts to bite her fingernails, and according to the blank look of Will’s face, she is not making sense. Again.
“I’m not sure what you’re-”
“I’ve never done this before so I’m learning on the spot, you know?”
“I-” Will dithers, not knowing how to answer. “Okay?”
“Right. Uh… I’ll just say it…” Robin clears her throat. “The first time I said what I had thought my entire life was when I was high in a bathroom with Steve Harrington.”
Will stares at Robin, wanting to her go on.
“I con-confessed that I didn’t like him. I didn’t like Steve “The Hair” Harrington, not because he was a douche. He was but that’s besides the point, I didn’t like Steve like that.”
“Like?” Will cocks his head to the side, trying to interpret Robin’s words.
“You’re not making this easy, Byers. Like that. I didn’t like Steve. And I didn’t like guys.”
“Oh.” Will mutters under his breath. “Oh? You’re…”
“Yeah.” Robin shyly smiles. “We’re the same, just like… in the opposite sense.”
Will feels his mouth go dry, looking away and clamming up.
If Robin is assuming that he is the same as her, then he’s not being as subtle as he thought and he feels sick.
Sick to his stomach.
If Robin knows, then other people might know and he feels like he’s about to throw up and he-
“Shit.” Robin interrupts Will’s thoughts. “I’ve said it wrong, haven’t I?”
Robin takes in Will’s appearance. He’s pale and terrified.
Robin has fucked up, and she doesn’t even know why she started this conversation in the first place.
What was she trying to be? A gay messiah? A fortune teller who tells people they’re gay? A gay mentor?
“You’re…” Will stutters out. “You’re not wrong.”
He glances up to Robin, catching her eye. A wave of understanding flows through both of them. Robin smiles back and chuckles to herself.
“So… I nearly went to your funeral because we were the same.”
“Fuck off.”
“What?” Robin exclaims.
“You were so self-pitying that my fake funeral was a comfort to you?”
“Damn, Byers!”
“Sorry.”
“Don’t be. I- I needed to hear that.” Robin laughs.
Will glances across the room, noticing that Steve is looking over at the both of them. One of those careful looks, that everyone gives Will but it’s not directed to Will. It’s to Robin.
Then, in an instance, he finally connects the dots. Dustin’s constant pestering over the phone back in California about how Robin and Steve would be perfect for each other, if Steve just asked her out. But… Steve never asked Robin out because he knew that Robin didn’t like guys, so…
“Hold on. Steve Harrington knows?” He gestures towards Robin.
“Oh! Yeah. He’s been so insistent that Vickie, you know the ginger girl at the school who’s been helping out, does the sandwiches sometimes? She’s got like short hair to here, and she’s like really pretty.”
“I’ve seen her around.” Will observes Robin’s overexplanation of Vickie. Robin has definitely got a crush.
“Right, so Steve is insistent that Vickie likes boobies.”
Will makes a face, “Gross.”
“Not for you, yeah.” Will smiles. “Steve is adamant about the fact that because she paused Fast Times at whatever time it was, She must like…”
Robin gestures to herself. Will raises an eyebrow, looking at Robin and then to Steve, who’s gotten distracted by Mike hovering over the radio desk. Then back to Robin, as a realisation washes over him.
“Wait.”
“Waiting.”
The cogs turn in Will’s head, “Steve Harrington is your wingman?”
“Ha!” Robin snorts. “Yeah he kinda is. Crazy how that works, Steve Harrington is my wingman.”
“That means that he’s… like fine with it all?”
“Surprisingly.”
“Wow.” Will looks over to Steve once again, who’s managed to move Mike away from the desk.
“You don’t have to sound so shocked, Byers. There’s people out there who accept others for who they are. Why’d you think that Mike is always just constantly there?”
Will blinks.
“You’d have no reason but to assume that maybe he likes you just like you like him because he’s that kind of guy, you know?”
Will can’t help but want to crawl in a cave and never come back out again, Robin’s words have managed to make him understand so much about the world and yet, he has no idea where she gets the audacity to think that Mike would like him like he likes Mike.
“Mike doesn’t like me like that. He’s got El.”
“They broke up, Byers… and you didn’t deny it.”
“Deny what?”
“That you like him.”
Will stares at Robin, and wonders that Robin had a perception score, it would be 20.
“Fuck off.”
“Ha!” Robin laughs again, who knew teasing Will Byers would be hilarious.
“No, no, no, no! You tricked me!”
“It wasn’t a trick, Byers.”
“Will.” He smiles.
“It wasn’t a trick, Will.” She smirks. “It’s natural. Love is natural.”
“I never said anything about love.”
Robin makes a face, reminiscent of the one she made to Steve in a bathroom stall, way back in 1985.
“It’s natural.” Robin shrugs her shoulders. “What… what we are is natural. Even if people say it isn’t. It is. It’s a fact. It’s human nature t-to laugh, to cry and to love whoever you want. It took me a long time to learn that.”
“But why? Why do they hate that we-?”
“They don’t understand it. And sometimes when people don’t understand, they are scared by it. Scared of the unknown. And they lash out and attack but it’s normal, it’s natural and it’s just what we are.”
Robin’s words make him remember the slurs thrown at him, the hits from his father and the looks the Party would give him every time he was pushed in the school corridor. He was fed up of it and-
“I’m… I’m gay.”
Will’s shoulders drop, like a metaphorical weight had been lifted and Robin's smile almost reaches up to her ears.
“Thank you for telling me, Will. I am really proud of you, you are braver than I ever was at your age.”
Will gives Robin an incredulous look, “I’m Will the Wise, not Will the Brave.”
“Ooooh, Will the Wise! Give me your wisdom” Robin pokes fun at him.
“If I was actually brave enough, I would’ve told Mike the truth about the painting.”
“The painting?” Now, Robin was completely lost.
“I made a painting for Mike, and I lied about it.”
“How can you lie about a painting?” Will smiles shyly at the question.
“The painting showed all of our D&D characters in a battle, with Mike at the forefront with his shield of hearts, because he is the heart of the Party.”
Robin scoffs and Will looks up with a piercing stare.
Robin puts a finger to her lips, and Will continues “I said that El was the one to commission the painting, because she loved him and wanted to show how much she felt.”
“But in reality, it was about your love for Mike.”
Will nods, “I wanted to show him that he inspired me and that I had been lost without him when I was living in California and that- That he made me feel like I wasn’t different and I wasn’t a mistake.”
Will glances across the room, his eyes resting on Mike. Robin follows his gaze and sighs.
“I was just putting my feelings onto El to try and hide, and I lied to him.”
“But you’re not hiding anymore.”
“I- No… I’m not. I’m just a liar. And now, they’ve broken up and I think Mike might blame me.”
“He’s stupid.” Robin declares.
“He’s-” Will immediately tries to defend Mike but it falls flat.
“You did lie, Will, but you’re not a liar. You’re just a young and naive boy.” Robin grabs Will by his shoulders and makes him look at her.
“A boy? I’m-”
“A boy who’s in love with another boy in this messed up world.” Will accepts Robin’s words, letting out a breath he didn’t know he was holding.
Then, he smirks. “And you’re just a girl who’s in love with another girl in this messed up world.”
“Hold on, I didn’t say I loved Vickie.”
“You’re the one who brought it up!” Will gasps exacerbately.
“Yeah I did but I didn’t…” Robin gets flustered.
Will laughs at her reaction and Robin smiles, knowing she’s just getting what she said given back to her.
A voice startles the both of them, “Will.”
Will looks up. It’s Mike.
Fuck.
Will starts to worry that Mike heard him but somehow the frustrated look on his face tells a different story, and his shoulders relax. Yet, Mike looks like he’s itching to say something and the glance across to Robin confuses Will once again.
“Can I talk to you? In private?” Mike looks back to Will. “I know that El didn’t commission the painting.”
Robin’s eyebrows just about shoot off her face as she scrambles out of the couch seat. She holds her hands up, whilst simultaneously furrowing her brows at Will.
“Forget I was ever here!” Robin exclaims. “See you later, Will.”
As soon as Robin is out of earshot, Mike turns to Will. He glances around the room before deciding to sit down on the couch.
“Why…” Mike catches Will’s gaze. “Why did you lie about the painting? Why did you lie to me?”
And there it was. The crushing weight of reality Will had forgotten.