Work Text:
There was someone at the door. There was someone knocking on their door at 3 am. There was an unexpected, unknown, complete stranger standing outside their home in the middle of the night… and there was a beautiful, messy, adorable, clever, and extremely sleepy woman snoring in the middle of the bed.
“Robin,” Nancy whispered in the dark. “Babe, wake up,” she insisted, softly passing her hand over Robin’s messed-up hair. There was more knocking, and more snores. “Robin, come on,” Nancy whispered a little louder, finally shaking the other woman’s shoulder.
“Hm?” Robin mumbled sleepily. She scrunched her face in a frown that Nancy found a little too cute for the situation at hand. Plus, Robin reached out blindly for her in the dark, threw an arm over Nancy’s stomach, and held her tightly, making Nancy’s heart leap in her chest.
“Robin, I love you so much, but you have to wake up. There’s someone knocking on the door,” Nancy said quietly.
“Well, tell them to stop,” Robin groaned, pressing her face against the pillow.
“Oh my god,” Nancy whispered to herself. She wondered how Robin managed to annoy her and fall even more in love with her at the same time. Usually, she found her girlfriend’s passion for her good night’s sleep to be endearing, but she needed her to wake up right away. Desperate times called for desperate measures, and so Nancy reached up to Robin’s face and started patting her cheek repeatedly with the tips of her fingers, not exactly slapping her awake but getting closer to it. “Robin, I swear to God, if you don’t wake up right now…”
“Fine,” Robin grumbled, finally opening her blue eyes, which inevitably brightened at the mere sight of Nancy beside her in bed, despite how badly she tried to look bothered and squint at her. “I’ll get the bat that Steve so thoughtfully gave us as a housewarming present,” Robin said, getting up from bed at last.
“Good, I’ll get the gun,” Nancy added without a hint of hesitation or joking in her tone. They had lived through enough things together that these were completely reasonable and even common actions on their part. A stray demodog had broken into their first apartment, and the military had kicked down the door of their second home. Their problems seemed to lessen after the first year out of Hawkins, but they couldn’t be certain the dangers would ever be over.
Nancy took the lead, expertly holding the gun in her hands as they entered the living room of their apartment. Robin trailed closely behind her. The sleepy part of her brain was fond and flustered about Nancy’s protective stance in front of her. She never let Robin walk first into danger, not that Robin ever let her dive into any kind of trouble alone, both were implicit facts of their relationship by then. Nancy held the gun, Robin tightened her hands around the bat, and the intruder knocked on the door again, as frantically as the first time.
Slowly, holding her breath and stepping as lightly as possible on the floor of the safest and most comfortable place she’d ever lived in that could be about to be ruined forever, Nancy reached the door and leaned in to look through the peephole.
“Max?!”
“Max?!” Robin echoed her question from two steps behind her.
Nancy unlocked the door quickly and threw it open. The couple was welcomed by the familiar sight of Max, looking as unimpressed as the first day they met her. A little taller, her features just slightly changed, but still the same temperamental, intelligent, sweet but aggressively guard child the two of them remembered from Hawkins.
“Oh, thank God it wasn’t an emergency,” Max said, rolling her eyes and walking past the two girls into the apartment, “You guys are so slow I was starting to think you were both dead.” She wearily eyed the weapons in the two women’s hands. “Are you going to shoot me now or should I knock on the door again?” Max asked with a sharp smile that to this day still made everyone, including Nancy and Robin, feel like the kid was the one with the upper hand there.
Robin and Nancy exchanged a look, a silent conversation in the span of a second. Next, Nancy went to the doorway, where she looked up and down the hallway, and, convinced of what she did or didn’t see, she closed and locked the door again. “What’s wrong, Max?” she asked the teenager, already feeling tension from the last couple of years seep back into her shoulders, “What’s going on in Hawkins?”
“Nothing,” Max shrugged her shoulders and adjusted the strap of the heavy-looking backpack she was carrying. “It’s as boring and ugly as ever. Nothing to miss.”
“Right,” Robin blurted out, she looked from the gid to her girlfriend and then around the room as if it would give her an answer. “Well, let’s… let’s lower the gun, first of all, yeah.” She gently pushed down the barrel of Nancy’s gun, who nodded and then gave up the gun, placing it confidently on Robin’s open palm. “Let’s put it this way,” Robin suggested while safely storing away both weapons, Max, are you, or anyone we know, in mortal danger?”
“No,” Max shook her head.
“Cool. Now, is Hawking, Indiana, and, or, the fate of the entire world in peril?”
“No,” Max rolled her eyes again.
“Awesome. Well, that’s always a good thing. Um… Nance?” Robin looked at her girlfriend for help.
Without her gun at hand, Nancy looked about as lost as Robin did with their current situation. “Do you… Uh… Do you want to come in?” Nancy asked, immediately flinching at her own words.
“Shit, what a great idea, Nancy. If only I’d thought about that!” Max laughed mockingly, signaling at her own body very clearly already standing inside the apartment.
However, something changed. This time, Robin laughed along with her. She chuckled and then covered her mouth with her hand, looking up at her girlfriend with an apologetic expression. It was the ice breaker they needed. The fog caused by sleep and the disorienting effect of preparing for danger and finding none was gone. They were back to being themselves as they’d always been. Robin could see Max more clearly now. As it often happened, it came back to Robin’s mind how much Max reminded her of herself. They had a lot in common, they always had, and, if anything, Robin felt incredibly proud and protective of the girl that she believed was impossibly stronger and braver than she’d been at that age, and would ever be probably. She was taken back to her years at Hawkins, the camaraderie, the love tying their small group together, and Max not so discreetly always drifting a little closer to Robin, and Robin always wishing she could offer more to the younger girl, more protection, more hope, more of anything. It looked like she was finally in a position to offer something.
“Okay, Max, since you so kindly barged into our home to honor us with your presence, might as well sit down, yeah? Do you want something to drink? Nancy won’t let me give you anything alcoholic though, she’s already giving me that look, please just ask for water, I’m begging you,” Robin said quickly, gesturing at Max, their couch, the kitchen, and Nancy, making nearly a dance performance of her hands waving in front of herself.
Max snorted, and gave them their first sincere, albeit very small, smile of the night. “Sure, water would be cool. The bus was a little gross,” Max replied, and moved to the couch at the center of the living room, still holding on tightly to her bag.
Robin passed by Nancy on her way toward the kitchen, giving her a reassuring touch on her hip and a look that said See? It’s okay. We’re solving the mystery. She came here on a bus and everyone is alive.
“Do you want me to take that to the guest room?” Nancy asked her, nodding at the bag in Max’s lap. Their guest room was a small and cramped space, more than often used by Steve and Eddie whenever they visited, but other than the bad in the corner it was sort of a storage room and office which, no matter how emphatically Nancy tried to organize it, Robin’s art supplies always seemed to encourage the mess that inevitably continued to take over between those four comforting four walls. However, the teenager only shook her head. Nancy flinched to herself, thinking she’d already made a mistake. Inhaling deeply, Nancy took a seat on one of the chairs and thought about what her wonderful and very unique girlfriend would do. She followed Robin’s lead. “Hey, I know the bus ride from Hawkins to hers takes a couple of hours. Did you have dinner? Are you hungry?”
Max shook her head and said, “It’s okay.”
“Are you sure? Because one of us can’t stop talking wherever we go and ended up befriending the people at a pizza restaurant nearby. We got an extra one for free and we have leftovers in the fridge.”
“Fine,” Nancy shrugged. She didn’t exactly smile, but she seemed considerably more relaxed, so Nancy counted it as a win. Nancy stood up to go get the pizza at the same time that Robin reentered the living room carefully balancing three glasses of water, making Nancy grimace. “Robin, why? Those are our last three glasses.”
“Don’t add any more pressure, Nance!” Robin fought back through gritted teeth, and when she managed to put the glasses on the coffee table, she sighed deeply, immensely relieved about not having broken anything new in their home. She let herself fall on the other end of the couch from Max and said to Nancy, “By the way, I heard that indirectly about me not shutting up, and I’ll have you know, I don’t appreciate it. I take offense, Nancy. I’m deeply wounded.”
In response, Nancy only shook her head and when she passed behind the couch she put a hand on Robin’s shoulder and a kiss on top of her head, making Robin smile warmly.
A few seconds after Nancy walked away, Max scoffed and turned toward Robin. “You’re whipped,” she laughed.
“Shut up,” Robin chuckled along with her and shoved Max’s shoulder, making her laugh even more. That was a good sign, Robin thought with a smile while she took a sip of water, giving Max a moment to hopefully say something that explained her impromptu visit.
“Have you seriously broken all the other glasses in your house?”
Robin sighed defeatedly at Max’s question and let her head hang for a second. “Okay, so, I am slightly more clumsy than the average person. So what? She broke a plate the other day and I don’t go around telling everyone about it,” Robin replied, knowing there was not an ounce of actual resentment in her voice and she couldn’t have been able to hold back her smile if she’d tried.
“Are plates and glass and that random house stuff expensive?” Max wondered, and took a big sip of her glass of water.
Robin blinked and considered the question. She wasn’t sure where this was going but she had a feeling there was a clue about Max’s current situation. “More than they should be, I think,” Robin shrugged, “But everything is. It’s uh, manageable though.” Max only nodded thoughtfully, which gave Robin an idea. “Are you… looking for buying plates and glasses and random house stuff?”
Max gave her a quick smile when she heard Robin repeating her words back to her, but then she was back to thoughtful looks and shrugs. “One can dream,” she said quietly.
Before Robin could think of anything else to say, Nancy reentered the living and passed one plate to Max, who eagerly accepted it, and one to Robin, who took it even more eagerly. “Oh thank you!” Robin exclaimed, warmed by the fact that Nancy just knew to get her a slice of pizza too even though it was the middle of the night. “Wait. Nance, you took a bite!” Robin complained, and looked up with a shocked face to see Nancy still chewing and shrugging apologetically. “Sneaky little thief,” Robin mumbled, taking a bite of her pizza and sending Nancy a wink.
“It’s good,” Max pointed out through a mouthful of pizza.
“I know right?” Robin agreed. “It’s actually not the best one out of all the restaurants we’ve tried around here, but it’s cheap and the people are nice, so worth it.”
“We tried making our own pizza one time. We narrowly survived,” Nancy added, smiling at Robin.
“Right. Yeah, keep looking at me like that as if it was solely my fault. You are as bad as me, Wheeler.”
“You made pizza from scratch?” Max interrupted them with a surprised tone.
“We failed to make pizza from scratch,” Robin insisted.
Nancy stepped in to say, “We enjoy trying new recipes, regardless of our success rate, which I swear is not as bad as you would expect.”
That made Max snort. “Gross,” she winced, “When did you guys turn into boring adults?” At first, the three of them laughed at her words, but just as it had been happening the entire night, Max’s joy was fleeting. “Do you like it?” she asked, quietly, not looking at either of them.
Nancy and Robin exchanged a look, and immediately a set of twin soft smiles started to blossom on their faces. “I do,” Nancy answered with all the confidence in the world.
“It’s better than expected,” Robin agreed.
Max nodded repeatedly, taking in the words, and finally, the facade started to crack definitely. “Fuck,” she said through gritted teeth, and then her hands flew to cover her face, she’d started crying.
For a moment, Robin looked scared. Nancy didn’t hesitate in getting up from her chair and moving toward Max’s side of the couch, where she carefully pushed her a little and whispered, “Scooch over.” Max complied, landing herself in the middle of the small couch between two women that were ready to do whatever it takes to help her through anything she might throw their way.
Max tried to stand up, and escape the situation she’d put herself in, but Robin’s arm stopped her and gently pushed her back into the couch. “Nope. I’m patient, Max, not stupid. Something’s wrong. Come on, talk to us,” Robin told her, as softly as possible. She held out her hand for Max, and she counted it as a tremendous victory when Max took her hand and squeezed tightly, while furiously wiping away her tears with her other hand.
“Talk about what? ” Max snapped. “About how nothing’s wrong? And everything's perfectly fine? And I got overwhelmed I don’t know fucking why ? I just, I don’t know, okay! I felt like I couldn’t breathe, like if I didn’t immediately get out of Hawkins I would die! I needed to, I needed to get away and I didn’t know where else to go.”
At first, Max flinched when she felt Nancy’s arm fall protectively over her shoulders, but she didn’t pull away completely. Instead, she seemed to lean into Nancy’s side, and she didn’t let go of Robin’s hand. Robin, who let Max catch her breath before saying, “I’m so fucking glad you thought of coming here, Max.”
“I woke you up at 3 am, ate your pizza, and you welcomed me with a gun,” Max said, staring at her lap and still brushing away her tears a little more roughly than necessary.
“Personally, I’d been hoping you’d do that since we moved in,” Nancy told her.
“You don’t mean that.”
“Max, we’re friends,” Robin insisted, “The point of getting a new place is that all your friends get a second home too. You can visit whenever you want, you can stay however long you need. No questions, no apologies, nothing. This is your home, too”
This time, Max didn’t reply at all, but that didn’t necessarily mean a bad thing. She was absorbing the words. Nancy and Robin could only hope she believed them. Before the silence could get too awkward, Nancy ventured to ask, “How’s El?”
“Fine,” Max mumbled.
“And Lucas?” Robin wondered.
“He’s okay,”
Desperately hoping they weren’t pushing too hard, Nancy asked her, “What about your mom?”
“Mostly the same as always,” Max sighed, before she regained some of the passion of her first outburst. “See? That’s what I mean! Everyone is fine, everything is fucking okay, except for me! And we’re talking about Hawkins , of all places, so the bar is pretty fucking low in terms of being fine and normal and okay. I just… I can’t go one day, one stupid day without feeling all this pressure and this weight and, oh my god, the fear . I’m so fucking scared, guys. Scared that I’ll always feel like this. I’ll always have something to be sad about, something to be scared of, something to be guilty of, and I’ll never be able to leave it all behind me! I just wanted to know, I wanted to see with my own eyes that… that…”
“That it was possible,” Nancy finished the sentence for her, and when she received a small nod from Max, she felt encouraged to go on. “You came here to see that it was possible to move on.”
“Yeah,” Max said through a shaky exhale. Slowly, she let go of Robin’s hand and shrugged Nancy’s arm off her shoulders, but instead of trying to get up again, she brought her legs up on the couch, getting comfortable finally. “I guess I thought that if you guys managed to pull it off maybe someday I could do it too. Which was pretty stupid considering I’m…”
“Objectively better in every possible way?” Robin suggested with a smile.
Max frowned at her. She looked almost furious and if Robin didn’t know her as well as she did by now, she wouldn’t have noticed the amusement in her eyes. “Don’t be stupid,” Max told her.
“I mean it,” Robin said, with a brief light chuckle because she could tell Max was uncomfortable with making the conversation too serious and even worse making it about her. “Listen, everything we’ve gone through, you’ve probably done it twice, and while being younger. And it’s really fucking unfair that you’ve had to deal with it at all but A, it’s never been your fault. B, it doesn’t change that you are a pretty awesome kid, and never any lesser than anyone on this planet, okay? And number three, I promise you, Max, from the bottom of my heart, that when you are ready, you will get out of Hawkins, and it will be worth it and exactly what you-”
“C,” Nancy blurted out, and after two pairs of eyes turned toward her, she immediately winced apologetically. Robin raised a questioning eyebrow at her, prompting Nancy to say, “I’m sorry! You said A and B and then number three instead of C.”
“Nancy, I swear to God…”
“Oh my God,” Max couldn’t help laughing at them. The action made a few more reluctant tears escape from the corners of her eyes, but it looked like the worst of it was over. “You guys are so stupid, maybe there is hope for everybody,” Max said. She attempted to keep up her playful tone, but enough vulnerability slipped through. She clearly was hoping that the two women sitting at her sides would detect the meaning of her words, the way she accepted to make an effort to believe their words but preferred not to say it in any more words than that. Judging by the smiles Robin and Nancy exchanged, they understood.
“Hey, you can’t just come into our home and call us stupid to our faces,” Robin reproached her, ruffling her hair. “There’s a price for it. You have to endure a hug now. Deal with the consequences of your actions young woman!”
Just like that, both Robin and Nancy threw their arms around Max. The embrace, albeit a little awkward at first, effectively managed to shift into an actually comfortable and heartwarming hug. Max tightened her arms around Robin, and didn’t even flinch at the light kiss that Nancy placed on her head. It was a moment of perfect peace, it was exactly what Max had needed deep in her heart when she was packing her bag and running away from Hawkins. After allowing herself another moment to just be held by some of the people she trusted the most in the world, Max finally pushed them away.
“Ugh, I’m never visiting again, actually. You guys make me cry and give me hugs, it’s awful. I expected from Steve, but I thought you guys were more fun,” Max told them, a genuine smile tugging at her lips.
Robin threw her head back laughing, and the other two joined, but before they could get too carried away, Nancy took Max’s hand and asked her softly, “Are you going to be okay?”
Max looked up at her eyes wide, vulnerable, and beautiful. She barely nodded, and asked quietly, “Can I still stay the night?”
“Max, you can stay as long as you need, I promise,” Nancy answered.
“It’s true,” Robin added, “The apartment is small but it’s comfy. We have food, we have a spare bed, the guest room is kind of messy but you probably like that, we have good music, we have nice neighbors, we have guns…”
“Please don’t touch the guns.”
“We have safely locked away guns that you can’t touch. We have great movies. It’s all good. We got you.”
Max looked from Robin back to Nancy and then at her lap. She scratched the back of her head and looked down for a moment, which didn’t really prevent Robin and Nancy from seeing the faint blush on her cheeks. “Okay. Yeah. Um, thanks guys,” she eventually said.
“One last thing, Max,” Nancy said, “I know that it makes you painfully uncomfortable to talk about all this, but you have to know that you can talk to either of us about anything any time, okay? And that even if you don’t want to, even if there isn’t anything to talk about, you don’t need an excuse to come here and stay with us.”
Max nodded a few times, taking in the words, but it looked like she was definitely done with the conversation for the time being. “Can I go put my stuff away?” she asked.
“Sure. Go wild, paint the walls if you want, mess up Nancy’s desk just for fun,” Robin encouraged her with a smile.
Nancy reached over behind Max to shove Robin’s shoulder, and the three of them shared a laugh. Max jumped to her feet, and held her backpack in one hand, but she hesitated before leaving. “Thanks again, guys,” she said quickly, stumbling just a little over her words, “I, um, I knew I could count with you and, yeah, I guess I love you, okay?” Then, almost too fast for it to register, she gave an extremely brief but very tight hug to Nancy, then Robin, and then she was pretty much running away from the living room.
After the teenager was gone, Robin and Nancy stayed quiet for a moment. Robin’s lips were parted in surprise, and Nancy looked on the verge of tears. They exchanged disbelieving looks, and Robin let out a marveled chuckle that could’ve easily turned into a sob with any more emotions that night. She slid on the couch closer to Nancy and then an idea popped into her mind and she looked almost terrified. “Wait. Nance, we didn’t say we love her back. Fuck. Should we go and tell her?” she asked in an alarmed whisper.
Nancy shook her head and smiled. “Robin, I’m pretty sure she knows,” she replied, hugging Robin tightly.
Max took her time getting comfortable in Robin and Nancy’s spare bedroom. She looked around at all the signs of a home, safe and made with love. Mountains of papers and notebooks from Nancy’s job. Unfinished painting from Robin. A sweater left behind by Steve on his last visit, a t-shirt of Mike, which matched the handmade gift by El and the painting made by Will that were proudly exposed in the living room, along with many more gifts and trinkets from their friends, from their family still in Hawkins. Her own bag was lying on the foot of the bed. This was proof that it was possible to go on, not without leaving Hawkins and their past behind, because having no past would make for a pretty empty home, but it was possible to grow and heal and keep going despite everything that they all had lived. That’s when Max realized that Robin was right, this wasn’t just Nancy and Robin’s home, there was a little bit of every member of their family there, and this home was a little of Max’s too. Whenever she’ll get to build a place for herself, she already had the reassurance that she wouldn’t have to make it alone.
The next morning, Nancy woke up on the couch, still wrapped in Robin’s arms, and with Max bundled up and still asleep in the chair closest to them instead of in the bed in the guest room. The first thought in Nancy’s mind that morning was that she really, really loved her family.