“I think I more was just like ‘I want to do boy shit, which includes saving princesses.’”
“I would date a boy for like a year, and just be chaste, like ‘oh the lord.. we can’t have sex because of the lord.’ And then as soon as I found out I was gay I was like… well I’m sinning already!”
“I have the opposite of survivor’s guilt for all my unrealized gay homies.”
As far as [my gay friends in HS] were willing to self realize was like a door for younger me, […] so I’m like I better just throw some oats in the young people gay.”
“The rare holographic member of boygenius that you can’t get in touch with by phone because that scares me.”
“I love myself. My name is Julien.” (For the classic Gayotic outro yes but it still made me feel emotions)
Mornings like this are becoming Nancy’s favourite thing, with the rising sun painting the room in golden light that always, always lands on Robin, who usually sleeps long past sunrise when she can. Nancy lets her; there’s nowhere for her to go anyway on this slow Saturday morning in Steve’s house, and the boys will only wake in an hour or so.
Nancy has taken to using that time to watch the picture of absolute serenity that is a sleeping Robin, with her cheek smushed into the pillow and her hair falling over her face in a way that never fails to make Nancy smile.
It also never fails to make her fingers twitch, itching to reach out and brush that hair behind her ear and see if her cheek is as smooth to the touch as it looks.
It gets stronger, this urge, with every slow Saturday morning that she wakes in the same bed as her. The journalist inside her wants to find a better word for it, a stronger one, to avoid repetition and ensure clarity. But all the words are big and carry implications for which Nancy is not yet ready.
She refuses to call it longing, this need inside her to touch and linger. She refuses to call it yearning, the way she looks forward to Friday nights at Steve’s with Robin and Eddie, or the way it fills her chest with excitement and giddiness just to think about sharing a bed and waking next to her and watching as all the things that overwhelm Robin on a daily basis are held off for at least another hour yet.
What’s in a word? she’ll scoff when it comes to interviews and articles and hours of agonising over sentence structure and synonyms.
But it’s on mornings like this that she realises that some words require bravery and tenderness rather than simple contemplation and calculation. Some words take time.
Beside her, Robin sighs quietly in her sleep, and Nancy shuffles closer. Because if she can’t be brave with words yet, not even with herself, she can at least be closer.
Using the momentum of a moment unguarded, her right hand comes up before she can stop it, finding a home on Robin’s cheek as she slowly, reverently brushes the hair out of her face and behind her ear. Her touch is light, fingertips ghosting over soft, warm skin — and feeling that softness upon her touch, she wonders if falling in love with Robin would be just as soft, just as gentle; just as warm.
Not a second later, Nancy pulls her hand away as if burned, her heart racing in her chest as if it were signalling her to run, you should be running, i’m racing like you’re running for your life before you’re caught and found out. Nancy balls her hand into a fist and scoots further back on the bed, feeling a heaviness inside her chest that has only been there for a few of these mornings. A fear. A panic.
Because terrible things happen when Nancy Wheeler wonders about love and touch and tenderness. And worse things still, because it’s not supposed to be like this. Not with Robin.
So she stays on her side of the bed, watching the sun dance along Robin’s skin, her hand still warm, the ghost touch of Robin’s soft cheek still present. And she watches, hand cradled to her chest to stop herself from reaching out again. She watches and wonders if maybe she should start using bigger words, because the pit in her chest is growing larger with every passing second and she needs something to fill it.
~*~
It happens again the next week. And the week after that. It seems like the first time broke something in Nancy, or maybe it came alive, but either way she can’t really stop reaching for Robin now. And her repertoire of words is growing with each Saturday morning, too. Longing, aching, yearning — they are classics. But there’s basking, too. Hoping, wishing, and imagining. God, does she imagine.
She imagines Robin’s lips turning up into a smile with Nancy’s hand on her cheek, she imagines her hand coming up to capture Nancy’s and just holding it. Or an image that makes her heart race again: kisses brushed to her knuckles. Or her lips.
She imagines, and she wishes, and she longs. But there’s also belonging. In fact, there’s a whole novel Nancy feels she could write in those early morning hours. A thousand pages dedicated to all the words that exist around Robin Buckley. Words that live inside Nancy; that part is important.
Four weeks have passed and the feelings have only grown stronger, developed more words that will forever remain between her and the morning sun. And Nancy can’t stop herself from trailing the back of her finger along smooth, warm skin, the touch too light to disturb the sleeping beauty.
Sleeping Beauty, who stills and stiffens minutely, but Nancy is too mesmerised to notice until it’s too late.
“You’ve gotta stop this,” Robin whispers, her voice hoarse from sleep, and Nancy’s heart leaps out of her chest in panic and embarrassment.
“Sorry,” she whispers, pulling her hand back toward her chest. She’ll explain. Robin had something on her face that Nancy brushed away, that’s all. It’s fine, it’s fine, it’s—
“Or I’ll fall madly in love with you if you don’t.”
Oh. Oh?
Oh.
Nancy swallows as her thesaurus dissolves and all words escape her. She blinks. Robin’s eyes are still closed but there’s a shadow of a smile on her lips, dimpling the skin that Nancy caressed just seconds ago.
There is the chance to just ignore that this ever happened, with Robin not looking at her, not making this moment real yet, on the brink of sleep and wakefulness. All she’ll have to do is wait. It’s the best chance she’s ever going to get, to forget about all this and get over it. Over her. Over whatever she has been building inside herself under the light of the rising sun over the past weeks.
All she’d have to do is remain still and silent and wait for Robin to fall back asleep.
But there was something about big words and bravery, and even though her thesaurus has left her and the thousand pages of things to feel, to say, to do, to think around Robin have torn themselves up because they were bleak and bland and not enough, Nancy feels brave on this particular morning.
Because the world hasn’t ended yet in all those weeks that she’s been thinking about Robin. In fact, the world has stopped ending since she started seeing Robin for who she is. And in a world where bravery is not about surviving, it is always about love.
And maybe that’s what she feels, maybe that’s what she wants, what she allows herself to want when she lays her hand on Robin’s cheek to caress the softest skin and gently comb back the strands of hair that are threatening to fall back over her face again. Her beautiful face that’s pulling up into a smile now — and Nancy is not imagining it. In fact, she’s smiling, too. She’s smiling so wide that a tiny little laugh bubbles past her lips.
Robin scoots closer, eyes squinting open now, as if to make sure this is real. As if she’s feeling the same. As if she meant it, what she said just now.
Nancy swallows thickly when Robin tucks her head under her chin, her body curling into Nancy’s, finding one of her hands to hold it. She still feels too raw, too vulnerable, and she wants to ask. Wants to be sure. Wants it to be real.
“Five more minutes,” Robin says, already on her way back to a deep sleep. “And then we’ll talk about this. I’ll tell you all about this girl I like. Think she might like me back. And she’s so warm.” She buries a little deeper into her side to chase that warmth that is now filling her whole body.
And Nancy gasps out a laugh this time, a tiny one, gentle and tender and all those words that are slowly coming back to her now that Robin is curled into her side and holding her hand. Her free hand comes up to comb through Robin’s hair in steady motions to lull her back into a slumber.
“Sleep,“ she breathes. “I’m not going anywhere.”
Robin hums, cuddling impossibly closer, and Nancy feels herself drifting off again, too. With a smile on her face. For the first time in years.
figure skater!robin teaching hockey player!nancy how to be quicker on the ice and at one point they do an obstacle course and Robin beats Nancy by a landslide and Nancy is so mad that they lost but absolutely adores the look on Robin's face when they win so she doesn't really mind
btw what if robin was a part of the rainbow room but escaped at a very young age and instead of telekinesis she had telepathy and maybe was an empath too like would anyone be interested in that
vaporwave
s-u-f-j-a-n-s-t-e-v-e-n-s
2087
ellievsbear
izzy806
theartofmadeline
kianamaiart
