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The Buckley estate sat in the quiet hills of Andorra, Pennsylvania, just up the Wissahickon. Its wood was darkened by age and weather, the porch sagging just enough to suggest it might creak under scrutiny rather than weight alone. The surrounding land was lush—trees, bramble, the low hum of cicadas swelling the moment the car door shut.
The air was cleaner here. Free of the lingering fossil-fuel tang she’d grown used to back in Massachusetts. She spent the four hours from Smith, hands tight on the wheel, thinking about Nancy—about how little slipped past her—and knew she was utterly fucked, one way or another. By the time she reached the outskirts of Philadelphia, the tension had already settled in her shoulders.
Picking Nancy up had not helped.
She was framed small and compact, all angles and restraint, as if every part of her body measured for precision. Her newly short hair emphasized the sharp line of her jaw, and Robin found herself memorizing the tilt of her neck.
The remaining forty minutes to Andorra were spent with the windows rolled all the way down—ostensibly for the fresh air, but really because Nancy’s perfume was driving her a little insane. Warm and floral, soft in a way that didn’t feel accidental. Robin found herself wishing Nancy would stop wearing it, if only so she could stop thinking about it.
Nancy chatted intermittently, voice light but focused, about a series of unexplained happenings at a lighthouse outside Boston—a minor case she’d been following, strange lights and missing artifacts. Robin listened, only half paying attention, her mind looping over the way Nancy’s hair caught the light, the low hum of her words.
After Hawkins, Nancy had left Emerson and taken a position at the Boston Herald. Robin was happy for her. Genuinely.
It just wasn’t all that ideal to be friends with an investigative journalist when you had something to hide. It was even worse to be accidentally stranded with one for an entire weekend, without Steve or Jonathan around as the usual buffers.
Jonathan and Steve had made the trip the previous month, back when Nancy was stuck in New York for work. Jonathan hadn’t thought about any of it, Steve didn’t care—he knew her, all of her—and Robin… well, Nancy would notice everything. She planned to keep that in mind this weekend.
The engine ticked as it cooled. Nancy shut the car door gently—carefully, as if the car were something fragile.
Robin had seen her hold a sawed-off Winchester shotgun without any of that care. Grip solid and familiar, like it was the only thing in her life she never bothered to be gentle with.
She was… confusing.
“So,” Nancy said, scanning the house as her shoes displaced fine gravel like water solidifying. “This is your uncle’s place.”
“Yep,” Robin said, a beat too fast.
Over here, she imagined saying, “That's the shed. Totally off-limits. Absolutely ominous. And yes, if you follow that exact trail, somehow, I’ll make it through without tripping over my own feet.”
Out loud, she said, “It’s kind of like The Evil Dead, minus the demons. I did get tetanus here once, though.”
“Brutal,” Nancy hummed. Not a smile.
The front door creaked open before Robin could say anything else.
Marty Buckley could’ve been mistaken for the house itself. Broad-shouldered, immovably solid and dressed in slacks, a collared shirt, and a sweater vest in various shades of brown and green. He held a mug that smelled like over-roasted beans; his mouth was set in a thoughtful frown beneath a greying chevron moustache.
Robin had learned, over the years, that this expression meant one of two things. Either he was already deeply inconvenienced by your existence; or, he was pretending to be and had quietly rearranged his day around it anyway.
“Robin,” he said, like a greeting and a fact.
She grinned, wide and toothy. “Miss me?”
“Regrettably,” he replied, then shifted his attention to Nancy, expression unwavering. “You must be Nancy.”
“Yes, sir,” Nancy said. “Nancy Wheeler.”
“Welcome,” Marty said, stepping aside. “Shoes off, if you don’t mind.”
Robin kicked hers off automatically. Nancy hesitated, then followed.
Inside, the house smelled of old paper and cedar. A spotted cat perched on the back of a moss-green recliner watched them without blinking.
Nancy softened, and Robin noticed.
“That’s Phoebe,” Robin added, for context.
“Phoebe?” Nancy repeated incredulous.
“Phoebe Cates—Fast Times, only one of the greatest coming-of-age films ever made.”
Nancy’s smile slipped out before she could stop it. Small but warm. Robin felt it linger, a little stubbornly, against her chest.
Marty’s gaze rested on her a moment too long, then moved on without comment.
“Rules are simple,” Marty said, already moving toward the kitchen. “Don’t go into the woods alone. If you hear something at night—no, you didn’t.”
It sounded like a joke, but landed like something else entirely.
He paused, hand on the doorframe.
“And crack the windows when you can,” he added. “Old houses don’t like being shut up too tight.”
Nancy nodded automatically. That tracked. Old wood. Poor ventilation.
Then she paused.
If you hear something at night.
Her gaze flicked to Robin, a small crease forming between her brows—not confusion so much as assessment. Filed away. Tagged for later.
Robin snorted and clapped her hands once. “So. House tour?”
Marty took a sip of his coffee and disappeared into the kitchen.
┈┈・ ✦ ・┈┈
Robin guided the house tour with a practiced casualness that barely disguised her nerves. Three floors: the guest room Nancy would be using—plus the now-famous basement, with the boiler room tucked behind it. Marty’s room was noted only by proximity. She mentioned the shed out back where Marty kept his “hunting gear” last, like it was just another detail, like it didn’t matter.
Not exactly a lie—though she hadn’t touched any of it in years. She didn’t linger on the thought, but her stomach tightened anyway.
“This is the study,” Robin said, already reaching for the light switch dangling above. The old bulb flickered, revealing shelves crowded with dog-eared books. Sunlight spilling through the window softened the shadows, but the corners of the room still seemed to deepen.
Nancy hummed, eyes scanning titles: American Folklore and Legend. Pliny the Elder’s Natural History. Meditations. Cryptids of the Northeast—annotated, worn.
“So you’ve read all of this,” Nancy said lightly. “That… explains some things.”
Robin crossed to the cabinet and pulled out a bottle of whiskey, setting two glasses on the desk.
“Cheers?” she offered. “To… not asking follow-up questions.”
Nancy’s gaze lifted from the shelves and met hers—steady, precise. She didn’t smile.
“I’m going to ask one follow-up question,” she said. Even. Measured.
The eye contact held just long enough to register. Then Nancy broke it, lowering herself into a crouch by the shelves as if the moment had passed.
Robin’s fingers had already begun their slow rotation around the rings on her left hand—gold, bronze, iron—slow and grounding.
“You always do that?” Nancy asked, lightly. Observational. Almost idle.
Robin’s chest tightened. She wanted to look away, to pretend, but the tilt of Nancy’s head, the faint curve of her mouth—she couldn’t.
She shrugged, rolling the same ring again. “Helps me focus.”
Nancy nodded, like that answered something. She rose smoothly, lifted her glass, took a small sip.
Then—mild as anything, like an afterthought—
“That part of the property,” she said, “still off-limits?”
Robin didn’t need clarification. Of course, that was what Nancy had zeroed in on.
Her lips quirked into a half-smile. “Still off-limits. Marty takes that seriously. Me… less so. I haven’t seen any of it in years.”
She let the last words hang there.
Robin leaned back against the edge of the desk, the whiskey warming her chest. Outside, the light had begun to thin. Late afternoon tipped toward evening, soft orange spilling through the windows and stretching their shadows long across the floor.
“You want to hear a story?” she asked, half a deflection, half a dare.
Nancy tilted her head. “Sure.”
Robin took a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding.
“When I was a kid,” she said, “there were tracks down by the creek. Big ones. Too big to belong to anything normal for around here.”
“People argued about it for months,” she went on. “Bears. Wildcats. Someone always said Bigfoot.” Her mouth curved, wry. “That guy printed flyers.”
“And?” Nancy prompted—gentle, but exact.
“No bodies. No missing pets. No real damage.” Robin shrugged. “Just… unease. People started locking their doors. Walking faster. Watching the woods instead of each other.”
Nancy nodded slowly. “Paranoia.”
“Exactly.” Robin tipped her glass, considering. “They went looking for something dangerous. Cameras, patrols, meetings. They wanted the thing they could point to.”
“And they found nothing.”
“Nothing.”
Silence settled between them. The house creaked softly, old wood adjusting to the cooling air.
“So,” Nancy said at last, easy. “Nothing dangerous, then.”
Robin huffed a quiet laugh. “That’s a matter of opinion.”
Nancy studied her—not sharp, not pushing. Just attentive.
“People went looking for a monster,” Robin said, quieter now. “That was the mistake.”
Nancy didn’t look away. “What did they miss?”
Robin met her gaze and held it.
“They weren’t being chased,” she said.
A beat.
“They just didn’t understand what they were looking at.”
Nancy nodded.
Robin tipped back the remainder of her glass as a wave of ease washed over her.
So; she was definitely tipsy.
Outside, the woods darkened another shade. Inside, the study felt warmer, less sharp at the edges. The story sat between them—not finished, not questioned. Just… there.
For now, that was enough.
┈┈・ ✦ ・┈┈
They didn’t leave the house right away.
The kitchen still carried the low, comforting weight of dinner; tomatoes and garlic, starch and heat—like the room hadn’t quite accepted that the plates were stacked and the pot was soaking. Marty waved them off with glasses riding too low on his nose and a book already open in his hand, Phoebe a familiar, immovable weight curled in his lap.
Outside, the air had cooled comfortably. Dusk hovered over the property in that brief, suspended way it did out here—the sky dimming but not yet dark, the world holding its breath.
They wandered without direction, following the curve of the yard as it sloped gently away from the house. The forest stayed at the perimeter—not pressing in, not retreating. Present.
Robin reached into her pocket and pulled out a joint and her bronze Zippo, holding both loosely between them.
Nancy glanced over, took the Zippo first, then the joint—no pause, no question—and lit it herself. The flame flared briefly, reflected in her eyes. She took a drag, then passed it back.
Robin blinked. “You smoke.”
“Sometimes,” Nancy said, like it wasn’t worth qualifying.
“Huh.” Robin took a long drag. The smoke settled warm in her chest—familiar.
They kept walking.
Near the edge of the tree line, a small group of white-tailed deer stood half in shadow, half in the thinning light. They lifted their heads as the women approached.
They didn’t run.
Robin slowed without meaning to. The deer watched her—ears forward, bodies still. No panic. Just attention.
Nancy was already watching her.
“They’re not skittish,” Nancy remarked.
“We’re pretty close,” Robin replied, voice low and serious. “That’s Jean-Baptiste, the one with the white ear is Princess, and Buddy Boy over there has a major attitude.”
“Really?”
“No.”
Nancy laughed—quiet, surprised. Robin laughed too. It felt good—dangerous.
One of the deer stepped forward, slow and deliberate, testing the space. The others stayed exactly where they were.
Robin’s stomach dipped.
Jean-Baptiste, you fucking snitch.
She exhaled smoke through her nose.
She became aware—too late—that Nancy had stopped walking too.
The joint was still warm between her fingers. Any calm she expected didn’t arrive on time. The thought to breathe came first; the breath lagged behind. The world felt fractionally misaligned, like her body had moved ahead of her judgment.
The deer lingered a moment longer, then drifted back toward the trees, unhurried.
Nancy watched them go. Then she looked at Robin.
“They really like you,” she said—just noting it.
Robin shrugged, forcing casual into her shoulders. “They’ve got bad instincts.”
Nancy didn’t argue. She didn’t move either.
The light thinned to gold, then to something quieter. The land settled around them.
Nancy’s perfume cut clean through the weed—sharp, floral, impossible to ignore. When her shoulder brushed Robin’s—she felt it everywhere.
Her pulse picked up, looking anywhere but Nancy.
Nancy tracked it.
She didn’t step away. Didn’t soften. She stayed exactly where she was, gaze steady, body open.
“Want to keep going,” she asked lightly, “or head back?”
It wasn’t about direction.
Robin looked at her this time. At the offer. At the very real opportunity to step away and pretend nothing was happening.
She didn’t take it.
“Yeah,” she said instead, voice a little rough. “Let’s keep going.”
Something in Nancy’s focus sharpened—interested. Like she’d just caught sight of a detail she’d suspected was there.
Warmth crept up the back of Robin’s neck, slow and unwelcome. And then—small, unmistakable, gone almost as soon as it surfaced—Robin’s eyes changed colour.
Nancy saw it.
She didn’t react. Just filed it away.
Robin swallowed.
Well. That was that.
If she was going to throw something into the fire now, it might as well be the thing she could afford to lose.
“Hey,” she said, voice unsteady, “Steve already knows this, and I really don’t want to make you uncomfortable—”
Nancy’s eyebrow lifted. Waiting.
Robin exhaled. “Steve and I are platonic with a capital P. Not just because we’re friends, but because I’m… kind of incapable of love. In that way.”
Nancy blinked—just once.
Her mouth curved faintly. “Got it.”
Robin froze. “Nancy, I’m serious.”
Nancy stepped a fraction closer—not crowding, not retreating. Just closing the distance she’d already measured. Her eyes held Robin’s a beat longer than necessary.
“And so am I,” she said, teasing but precise. “The ‘babes’ at Emerson were sweet. But not for me.”
Oh.
Oh.
They didn’t remember turning back.
Robin looked down, realizing they’d stopped moving. The porch creaked softly beneath her feet.
┈┈・ ✦ ・┈┈
The door shut behind them with a soft, final click, their cheeks still flushed from the night air.
Robin lingered in the foyer, keys still in hand, suddenly hyper-aware of her body—too warm, too alert, skin prickling in a way that felt slightly out of sync. The moon wasn’t visible through the windows, but that didn’t matter. It never really did.
Nancy kicked off her shoes by the door. Easy. Unselfconscious. Like this was just another night without consequences.
Robin followed her deeper into the house, careful and measured, every step restrained as if taking up too much space might tip something delicate. Phoebe was curled in a tight, unmoving loaf on the arm of the couch, asleep and perfectly unconcerned.
Nancy paused near the hallway, fingers resting lightly against the doorframe.
“You can—” she began, then stopped. Reframed. “You don’t have to explain anything.”
Her voice said the opposite.
Robin swallowed.
“You know that’s not true.”
Nancy nodded once. She’d expected that answer.
They ended up in the guest room without ever deciding to go there. The bed was neatly made, untouched. Temporary. That felt right. Nancy sat at the edge of it, hands folded loosely in her lap, posture open but deliberate—leaving space. An exit. A choice.
Robin didn’t take it.
She stayed standing, leaning back against the dresser, arms crossed tight over herself. She could feel the low hum under her skin again, steady but insistent.
“Earlier,” Nancy said gently, “you noticed that I noticed...”
Robin’s jaw tightened.
There it was—not an accusation, not a question she could dodge. Just the thing itself, set carefully between them.
“I wish it was different,” Robin said, because it could mean anything if you said it fast enough.
Nancy didn’t interrupt.
Robin dropped her gaze to the carpet, following the pattern without really seeing it.
“It fucks with you,” she said. Honest. “I’m exhausted. All the time.”
She let the admission sit. For a moment.
“It’s more like vinyl,” she went on, voice lower now. “You spin the same record too many times, it starts sounding wrong.”
A breath.
“Or, you stop playing the tracks that draw attention.”
Nancy leaned forward slightly, elbows braced on her knees—not closer, just more present.
“So you curate,” Nancy asks quietly.
Robin huffed. “I archive.”
Nancy rose then—not abruptly, but not slow either. She let the distance between them shift. Robin recalibrated without thinking; back brushing the dresser.
“Nance—”
The name slipped out before she could stop it.
Nancy stilled. Just for a beat.
Robin felt it like a held breath.
Nancy didn’t comment on it. She only said, softer now,
“I saw your eyes.”
Not fear. Not judgment. Observation.
“And?” Robin asked, brittle.
Nancy held her gaze. Didn’t blink.
“I see you.”
Something in Robin’s chest gave.
She swallowed.
“People saw strange tracks and lost their minds,” she continued. “Just the idea that something was out there… that I—”
A beat.
“—I was a kid.”
Her voice cracked on the word. She didn’t try to fix it.
Nancy didn’t look away.
“Do you really think Jean-Baptiste saw someone threatening?” she asked quietly.
Robin’s lips twitched despite herself.
“Deer are famously stupid in dangerous situations.”
Nancy’s mouth curved—barely. Not amused. Understanding.
The space between them held. Open. Waiting.
Nancy didn’t step closer. Didn’t retreat. She stayed exactly where she was.
Robin moved.
Not rushed. Not desperate. She closed the distance herself and kissed her.
The kiss lasted.
Nancy deepened it, controlled and deliberate, setting the pace without breaking contact.
Robin stayed where she was, didn’t try to match it.
Nothing snapped. Nothing surged out of control.
When they finally parted, it wasn’t abrupt. Nancy eased back gently, still close, their breath shared, foreheads brushing.
Nancy stayed.
Robin did too.
┈┈・ ✦ ・┈┈
Sunlight came in through the open windows, resting across the counter and the table in long, unmoving lines. The house was still.
Robin stood barefoot at the counter, hair pressed flat on one side, T-shirt and boxers wrinkled from sleep. She waited for the coffee to finish, one hip against the cabinet, posture loose and unguarded. WMMR played low on the radio, the signal thinning in and out.
Nancy sat at the table, hands resting idly in her lap. She looked comfortable there—back against the chair, shoulders down, gaze drifting past the window to where the trees moved slowly in the breeze.
The coffee maker clicked off.
Robin poured two cups and set one in front of her. Nancy took it with a faint smile and wrapped both hands around the mug, letting out a quiet breath.
Phoebe jumped onto the table and settled nearby.
Robin leaned back against the counter.
“Marty’s asking how long we’re staying.”
Nancy hummed, considering it for half a second. She took another sip.
“I’m not on a deadline.”
Robin nodded, like that was casual.
It wasn’t.