A Bubble of Light.
Hawkins, summer of 1987.
After a year of indescribable suffering, everyone was ready to have some peace and quiet and to live their teenage years that they had lost because of things that weren't easy to imagine as real.
June couldn’t come earlier for everyone, especially for Robin. She had decided to keep on working so that she could do as she said, "Some shit with her life, maybe even go crazy and study a university degree." And it wasn't a crazy idea for her. It was what she actually wanted. The idea became more real every time she talked to Nancy Wheeler. Because that is something that she did more and more after 1986. They became friends, as in official friends, and Robin couldn’t be happier about it. Nancy was the one who brought her back to Earth about everything, even when she had to bring herself back as well.
Robin took the time and put in the effort to pay her back in some way. Whether that was spending time with her or leaving her alone, because she had discovered many things about Wheeler, and one of them was that she needed to be accompanied and alone both at the same time.
Company and silence, one Robin was good at, the latter...not so much. But she learnt silence, she learnt small silences with few comments, or silence filled with a small melody playing from the speakers in Nancy's room. Silence with fleeting touches of comfort, ones that Robin tried so hard not to think about, only to later find herself sprawled out in her own bed, Blondie playing in her Walkman, and her fingers caressing that part of her arm where Nancy had touched her, mouth slightly agape as she thought about everything and nothing at the same time.
That's how it was with Robin. You got everything and nothing at the same time, although for Nancy, it felt like everything all the time. She gave so much of herself, and Nancy had learnt to give something back in return, telling her some random anecdote that had happened to her either in the past few days or when she was ten. Sharing had started becoming easier for her, and sometimes she joined Robin in her everlasting rambles about nothing in particular because she secretly loved it, the journalist in her was amazed to have her mind opened to so many different concepts such as... Spontaneous Human Combustion? Just because Robin had read about it in some article in an odd magazine.
They had started to take their conversations to the outside, the heat becoming unbearable in both of their houses as they could only talk with a closed door as the topics varied every five minutes.
That day, June sixth, they left Robin's house around seven in the evening, the sun slowly making its way down, but the heat it gave off still stuck to their bodies. The forest was their objective, and they walked both in summer dresses taken out from Nancy's closet as she had insisted that Robin would be grateful for any breeze she could get.
The soft rays of sun filtered through the leaves as they arrived at their destination, though they didn't stop walking, they wandered mindlessly one beside the other, their skin sticky and their eyes bright. Nancy's eyes scrunched up as she smiled at Robin's impossible hand gestures as she was telling her about some Neurolinguistics theory that explained language acquisition, and they had started talking about how Mike was the tiniest baby that Nancy had ever seen.
Nancy bent down as she started seeing patches of yellow flowers and white fluffy dandelions, collecting some and passing them to Robin who really didn't seem to notice as she took the various plants with her hand, gently. Soon enough, Nancy made a comment about the flowers as Robin decided to quiet down for a second, "needing to breathe in the fresh air." And Robin laughed as she looked at the brunette, of course she had noticed about her putting flowers, but she had thought they were small presents, to which Nancy had replied with an "of course" and a light chuckle from her lips.
Of course, they were little presents, a thank you for making her go back to her teenage years, even if they were already on their twenties. For making her feel those very typical teenage butterflies that she would not admit as they flown around her stomach in the most agitated manner with just some fluttering of Robin's eyelashes, even if it's what she did every time she blinked. It just felt special. It just felt like a breeze of warm summer air filled with crinkled grass under their bare feet, eye wrinkles as the corners of their lips lifted in smiles, and their mouths opening to let out laughs.
They felt like a summer breeze, carefree and back to what they should have had some years ago, though it wouldn't have been the same, Nancy thought. Some years ago, given things had been normal, it wouldn't have been Robin taking her hand as she decided to run through the trees.