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flowercrowngods · 11 months

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ronance yearning hours

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.

#ronance #nancy wheeler #robin buckley x nancy wheeler #robin buckley #one day i’ll stop being pretentious about yearning hours but i am Not Creative and this was supposed to be just floaty but now it’s #not. because uh. i don’t think nancy pov can be floaty. because that girl has seen too much in a way that she’s not allowed to process #but uh. i’m not gonna go on a nancy rant now. maybe this is as floaty as it gets. maybe i can do better. only one way to find out #anyway nancy is yearning #if you saw this earlier no you didn’t. i hit post too soon like a real pro #does this make sense? idk it was written in a discord group chat bc i’m a madman who avoids documents like the plague apparently #dio words

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electrical-communication · 6 months

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Truthfully (wip)

Truthfully, walking was never as convenient as teleporting; when you’ve spent years as a rogue robot in hiding, however, you got used to not having the privilege of accessible teleport spots. Truthfully, Blues quite liked these little nature walks. Rock and Roll did too, but they weren’t as fond of thoughtful silence as their older brother was. The duo walked ahead of Blues, chatting away with each other about something or other. Truthfully, Blues was too distracted by the view of the vibrant sunset and distant calls of birds to eavesdrop on his siblings’ conversation, although he appreciated the background noise of the two talking all the same. And (perhaps a little vainly, he thought to himself) he was just a tad bit mesmerized by the way the sun rays glistened on his new plating. It was odd, really, to think he had spent so long avoiding this place yet now he found himself with an absentminded, contented smile on his face while on his way back to Light Labs. Truthfully, Blues could hardly remember the last time he smiled before he came home.

Blues was snapped out of his daydreaming by a rather strange sound. It was like… distressed squeaking. It was then that he noticed his siblings had stopped in their tracks, hunched over like they were examining something on the ground.

“Hey- oh,” Rock turned to catch Blues’s attention, but was shocked to see the older robot was already behind him, peering at what had the other two so interested.

It was a cat. Well, a kitten to be more precise. Truthfully, Blues was not expecting that, though luckily his surprise didn’t show on his face.

“What is a kitten doing all the way out here?” Roll asked. True, the little scamp was less like the young of a highly successful species of predators and more like an orange clump of fur hardly larger than a finger nor wider than one either. It was tucked away in some bushes, as if that would work to conceal its location when it was practically mewling its little head off earlier. Truthfully, it probably would have been mistaken for a really orange dandelion or something had it not been the noise.

“We should leave it alone. The mother is probably around here,” Blues suggested, already beginning to step back. He had enough encounters with wild animals as a runaway to know better than to get involved with situations like this. Of course, Rock didn’t have that kind of experience, so Blues expected it when the younger shot him a sad look, even if it didn’t make it sting any less.

“Aw, but it’s prolly so sad by itself. Can’t we play with it a little or something?” Rock probably would not have appreciated being told he was pouting, but he was totally pouting. Blues eyebrows lowered, and for the umpteenth time today he was thankful for the visor obscuring his eyes. What Rock was doing was dangerous, but Blues supposed he couldn’t blame him. Most of Rock’s interactions with animals were the companions built for him; and even if Tango could imitate the fickle nature of a real cat, he was nowhere near close to having the— for lack of a more flattering term— primitive mind of the real thing. Dr. Light and Dr. Cossack had done plenty of anthropomorphizing Rush, Tango, and Beat’s behavior— which is fine, because they are robots— but applying that expectation to organic animals was a dangerous thing. But Blues didn’t have the time to explain all of that to Rock.

“We might scare it,” Blues offered instead. Truthfully, Blues felt a bit pleased with himself when he saw Rock’s expression change from one of pouting to understanding. Blues turned to Roll, waiting to see her face change too, but instead he saw her thoughtful gaze examining the bush.

“I don’t see any other kittens here… I don’t think mama cats leave their babies far from each other,” Roll stated, but when that didn’t cause much of a reaction she added, “Plus this kitten is really friendly.” Roll gestured down to her feet as she said that, and it was then that the boys noticed the kitten had nuzzled up against her.

Blues waited for her to elaborate more, but it seemed Rock had already guessed what she was alluding to. “You’re saying you think they were abandoned?” Rock gasped. Blues mulled it over. It did make some sense. Truthfully, Blues had seen more than a few stray cats in the cities, and though he didn’t know too much about them, he knew enough to know they were quite skittish creatures who didn’t tend to approach humans (or in their case, human-like beings) without being accustomed to their presence first.

“I think she’s saying she thinks they were abandoned by a human,” Blues said, and at Roll’s confirmatory nod he heard Rock let out a sad little “oh”. “It probably wasn’t that long ago either. With as loud as he is, he would’ve been-“ Blues cut himself off, remembering the rather sensitive hearts (figuratively) of his siblings. “He wouldn’t still be here,” he quietly finished. A part of him felt guilty, as if he were to blame for the way nature worked and he wasn’t simply relaying that knowledge to his more naive siblings.

“Do you think maybe we just missed whoever dropped them off here?” Roll asked, having now squatted down to pet behind the kitten’s ears. Truthfully, they had crossed paths with a few humans on their walk— fortunately, none of them could match the robots’ child-like base appearances with their much more (in)famous armored forms, and Roll wasn’t very recognizable to the public outside of roboticist nerds— and all of three of them would have been none the wiser to any human’s foul feline-related motives. “If we search, we might be able to find them before they get away,” Roll half-heartedly suggested.

“They’ll just throw it back out again,” truthfully, Blues was a bit startled by the harshness of his own tone. It seemed to spur Rock on though.

“We can’t just leave them here without help!” he said, looking between the both of them for agreement. When Rock met Roll’s eyes, though, he stopped and the two both smirked as they reached some sort of mutual understanding.

“No, no. No way, Rock!” Roll gesticulated x’s with her hands, but the venomless tone and mischievous glint in her eye gave away her excitement for whatever idea the boy had.

“We should adopt the kitten,” Rock blurted out anyway, finally clueing Blues in on their disagreement. “You know you want to, Roll!”

“I know! But… You know it’s just..” Roll kept trailing off and interrupting herself, seemingly struggling to find the right words. “It’s just not the responsible thing to do,” she finally settled on saying. “Right, Blues?”

Truthfully, Blues felt a little warmed that Roll turned to him as the “responsible” one. Sometimes, Blues felt like his life was a series of terrible, impulsive decisions that he lived on with pride—fine for him, but awful for a role model. Still, if his sister thought he was someone to look up to, then that must mean maybe he was doing something right. He couldn’t let her down!

Blues looked back to the kitten, and already he felt his resolve weaken. Logically, he knew that picking this kitten up off the ground and bringing it to home was irresponsible and impulsive, but he also logically knew that this kitten would die in an hour or so without their intervention. Truthfully, looking at the raggedy orange thing— worn down already from its abandonment but with nobody to turn to care for it as it needs to be— he found that he was overcome with the urge to take care of it. Hell, if Dr. Light didn’t let them keep it at home, then Blues knew he would care for the kitten in secret at that point.

“We can take them to Dr. Light and ask him,” Blues compromised, already scooping the kitten into his hands before the other two could react. He began walking off toward Light Labs again, but halted when he realized he didn’t hear the thudding of his siblings behind him. He turned his head to see the two were stunned were they stood at his switch-up. “Well? Aren’t you two coming or do I have to ask him myself?” Blues playfully asked, and that seemed to snap the duo out of their stupor.

“I want to be the one to ask! I got to see his face when he sees them!” “Nuh-uh! I should ask him first!” The two raced forward, seemingly unaware that Blues was still the one holding the kitten. He shook his head with a fond smirk, and continued after them at a much slower, steadier pace than they traveled. Truthfully, Blues quite liked this whole “being an older sibling” thing.

—————————

Dr. Light knew better than to fret, he really did, but he couldn’t help feeling just a twinge concerned that his children weren’t home yet. Of course he knew that whatever the world threw at them, the combined force of his triplets would be more than capable of handling it. Still, they were supposed to be here by now… His finger twitched by the communicator—

“C’mon, Light! Ain’t you supposed to be gettin’ work done instead of bein’ a worrywart?” Auto’s crass voice interrupted his thoughts. The good doctor let out a sigh.

“You’re right,” Dr. Light relented, turning back to the project on his table. Besides, he knew if he sent Rock or Roll a message, the kids would teleport back to the lab immediately and stay by his side— which kinda ruined the whole point of them spending time out to explore themselves. Normally Auto was quite nosy too, but ever since Roll had— rather firmly— given him orders to keep Light on track when she wasn’t around, he did his best to follow them. It just wasn’t in his little mechanical heart to disappoint her (nor was it in his heart to tank the scolding afterward).

#yeah it’s a fucking fanfic jumpscare. about the kitten I drew that one time #it’s a WIP and it prolly won’t be finished cuz I kinda hate it #I wrote it cuz I was depressed and thought it’d make me feel better but eventually I got stuck #maybe I’ll add more to it one day #I have no idea how to write these characters </3 #my fanfic :)

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