hawkins' very own spider-girl
synopsis ➜ robin buckley is hawkins' very own spider-girl. but trying to juggle her secret identity is becoming increasingly harder as she falls for the prettiest girl in hawkins
a spider-ronance blurb
Robin kept secrets badly in all the ways that mattered.
Not the facts. Facts, she could juggle. Facts were easy. Facts were lockers and lies and carefully timed excuses, bruises hidden under long sleeves, a backpack heavier than it should've been because the mask and suit was tucked into the bottom under chemistry notes and a half-eaten granola bar.
It was the feeling of it that ruined her.
Because Nancy looked at her too closely.
Not suspiciously, exactly. Nancy Wheeler had a stare like she was always half a second from solving a murder, but with Robin it was softer than that. Warmer. It made Robin feel peeled open. Seen. Which was, frankly, a disaster when she was secretly the masked menace currently swinging around Hawkins and also maybe, possibly, definitely in love with her terrifyingly beautiful best friend.
“Why are you limping?”
Robin froze halfway through opening the fridge. “I’m not.”
Nancy leaned against the counter, arms folded. She was wearing one of Robin’s old sweaters because she spilled coffee on her own shirt an hour ago, and Robin had been trying not to pass out about it ever since. “You are,” Nancy said. “Also, you winced when you reached up.”
“I didn't.”
“You did. Twice.”
Robin grabbed an orange soda because it gave her something to do with her hands. Her ribs ached where a guy in a rhino-themed exosuit kicked her through a billboard three nights ago. Her shoulder was a bright, hot line of pain. She had been doing so well, too. Normal amount of weird. Manageable amount of pining. And then Nancy showed up at her door tonight with takeout and a stack of notes and that little crease between her brows that told Robin one thing.
"I’m worried about you."
Which was honestly more dangerous than any supervillain.
“I fell,” Robin said finally.
Nancy’s eyes narrowed. “Doing what?”
Robin opened the soda. “Parkour.”
“Robin.”
“Fine. Just... tripped on the stairs.”
“You live in a one-story house.”
“Then I... emotionally tripped on the stairs.”
Nancy’s mouth twitched.
That was the worst part. Nancy smiling at her made Robin want to confess everything.
Hi, yes, actually, I wasn’t avoiding your calls, I was dangling upside down from a radio tower trying to stop an arms deal. Yes, the split lip was a mugging, technically, except I was one of the muggers if you define mugging as aggressively interfering with organized crime. Also I think about kissing you so often it should qualify as a medical condition.
Instead Robin said, too quickly, “Anyway, how’s your article?”
Nancy didn't let her get away with it. Of course she didn't.
She crossed the kitchen in three steps, gentler now, close enough that Robin could smell her shampoo. “You’re hurt.”
Robin looked anywhere but Nancy’s face. The floor. The counter. The stupid orange soda sweating in her hand. “I’m okay.”
“Robin.”
That voice.
God.
Robin laugher, small and thin and hopeless. “You know, it’s actually really unfair that you get to say my name like that.”
Nancy blinked. “Like what?”
“Like…” Robin gestured helplessly. “Like you care.”
Nancy went very still.
For one wild moment, Robin thought this was it. This was where the whole thing collapsed. Secret identity, emotional repression, friendship, all of it. She could practically hear the thread snapping.
But Nancy just reached out and touched Robin’s wrist. Lightly. Like she was asking permission.
“I do care,” Nancy said.
And Robin, who faced down a man throwing pumpkin bombs last week without flinching, nearly folded in half.
The mask was in her bag in the hall closet. Her suit was drying where she hand-washed blood out of the sleeve. There was a police scanner tucked under her bed. She had exactly a thousand reasons not to do this.
Nancy’s thumb brushed over the inside of Robin’s wrist, where her pulse had absolutely abandoned any attempt at dignity.
“You keep disappearing,” Nancy said quietly. “You come back bruised, exhausted, looking like you haven’t slept. And every time I ask, you make a joke and I let you. But I’m done letting you.”
Robin swallowed. “Nancy—”
“Is someone hurting you?”
Yes, Robin thought. Repeatedly. Usually while monologuing.
“No,” she said.
Nancy searched her face with that same impossible, open attention. “Then tell me what’s going on.”
Robin wanted to. God, she wanted to.
She wanted to tell Nancy about the first time she jumped off a roof and realized she could trust the webline to hold. About the horrible responsibility of hearing sirens and knowing she could do something. About how lonely it was, sometimes, to be the only one between the city and the awful things that were crawling through it. About the way she always checked Nancy’s street twice on patrol, just in case. About how every secret had started to feel like a wall between them, and she was so tired of walls.
But if she told Nancy, Nancy would become part of it. A target. A weakness. The one thing every enemy would reach for first.
So Robin did the hardest thing she knew how to do.
She stepped back.
Nancy’s face changed almost imperceptibly. Not anger. Something worse. Hurt.
And Robin hated herself for putting it there.
“I can’t,” Robin whispered.
Nancy’s hand fell to her side. “Can’t... or won’t?”
Robin looked at her then, because she owed her that much.
The answer was all over Robin’s face, apparently, because Nancy’s expression softened with sudden understanding, not of the secret itself, maybe, but of the shape of it. Of the weight.
“There's something...” Nancy said.
Robin nodded once.
“Something dangerous.”
There was a longer pause. Then another nod.
Nancy inhaled. “And you think telling me would put me at risk.”
Robin’s laugh was shaky. “You make it sound so rational when you say it.”
Nancy tilted her head. “Isn’t it?”
“No,” Robin said, and then, because the truth had to go somewhere, “It’s unbearable.”
The room went quiet.
Nancy looked at her in that piercing way, but now there was something unguarded in it too. Something tender enough to make Robin’s chest ache harder than her ribs.
“Robin,” Nancy said, very softly, “whatever this is… you don’t have to carry it alone forever.”
Robin almost said, I know.
Instead she said, “I’m trying really hard not to drag you into my mess.”
Nancy gave her a sad little smile. “That sounds noble.”
“It is,” Robin said. “And also very stupid. I contain multitudes.”
That got a real laugh out of Nancy, brief and breathy and beautiful.
Robin felt the whole world tilt.
Nancy stepped closer again, slower this time, giving Robin every chance to move away. But she didn't.
“You don’t have to tell me tonight,” Nancy said. “But you are going to let me help with the limping.”
Robin glanced down. “That depends. Is your bedside manner mean?”
“Extremely.”
“Hot,” Robin said before her brain could stop her.
Nancy’s eyes widened.
Robin slapped a hand over her face. “Great. Perfect. Super. Ignore that. I’m concussed, probably, so legally that did not happen.”
For half a second Nancy just stared.
Then she smiled. Small, stunned, real.
“No,” Nancy said, voice warm now, “I don’t think I'll ignore it.”
Robin lowered her hand.
Nancy was blushing. Just a little.
Oh...
Oh.
The air between them changed shape.
Robin’s heart was doing unlicensed acrobatics. Somewhere across town, crime was probably happening, but for once the universe would just have to wait.
Nancy nodded toward the hallway. “Sit down. I’ll get the first-aid kit.”
Robin, still dazed, managed, “You know, for someone not currently dating Spider-Girl, you are being weirdly understanding about mysterious injuries.”
Nancy paused in the doorway and looked back over her shoulder.
There was the faintest glint in her eyes. Clever and calm and devastating.
“Robin,” she said, “who says I haven’t figured out more than you think?”
And then she disappeared down the hall, leaving Robin standing in the kitchen with an open soda, a bruised rib, and the sudden terrifying shock of her words.
