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pacinglikeghosts · 4 months

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happy new years eve and happy birthday nancy wheeler (according to my headcanon)! as yall have seen, i have been plagued by percy jackson brainrot as of late, but i also missed writing ronance, so i combined the two! this does not have a title yet, and it's still a ROUGH draft, but here is a percy jackson-ish ronance au, with some homoerotic sparring, a date by the lake, and lots of weird pacing <3 godly parents are mostly based on simplytomh on twitter's assignments.

Robin had been at camp for just about a month, and she was convinced she had broken nearly every bone in her body—twice. Every day, she woke up with her body aching and new bruises littering her skin. Apparently, there wasn’t enough nectar and ambrosia in the world to help her.

Frankly, she felt like no matter what she did at camp, she was destined to fail. Sure, she had been claimed by her godly parent, which was…nice, she supposed. Glad to know her father wasn’t just some deadbeat that left her and her mom alone for seventeen years, but rather a deadbeat god who did all of that, and gave Robin a messed-up brain. It was a bit of a relief to find out her talent with languages wasn’t sparked from sheer boredom, but a trait from her dad’s side of the family, though it was a bit insulting to find out her half siblings are typically athletic and skilled at lying—though she could fib her way out of some small issues, she certainly wasn’t athletic.

Even as half god, she was still a fuck up. Great.

“Well, good morning, feather-feet,” Steve greeted with a grin far too cheerful for nine in the morning.

Robin glared up at him through her bangs. “Never call me that again.”

Steve laughed, holding his hands up in surrender. “Sorry, Rob…are you ready for sword fighting?”

“Against Nancy? No way.”

He shook his head, bending down to tighten the laces on his sneakers. “C’mon, Nance isn’t that bad. She’s just…she’s got a thick skin and she’s one hell of a fighter, but she’s not the emotionless bitch everyone makes her out to be. She’s got a big heart,” he insisted. “Besides, I know you’re into her.”

“I-I don’t know what you’re talking about, and I don’t need you mettling,” Robin muttered as she tugged on the bright orange collar of her camp t-shirt, her face growing warm. “Don’t you have some crafts to do with some of the younger campers? Or some flirting to do with a certain child of Apollo?”

Steve’s ears tinged pink, his own turn at embarrassment taking force. “Shut up,” he mumbled as he hid his face behind a poorly disguised cough. “See you at lunch. Let me know how sword fighting goes.”

Robin rolled her eyes and headed towards the arena, her body aching with every step. No matter how much her new-found best friend attempted to will it otherwise, there was no way her encounter with Nancy in that arena would end up as anything other than positively terrible.

***

“It should be simple for most of you at this point,” Nancy Wheeler, Athena’s golden child and head counselor began as she grabbed a glittering gold sword from the pile. “Combat is all about strategy. You need to be two steps ahead of your opponent at all times. Now, to demonstrate, I need someone to come help me. Robin, I think you’d be a good fit for it.”

“I definitely do not think I would be,” Robin protested. “Unless you want everyone here to watch me fall flat on my face and embarrass myself.”

Nancy loosened her grip on the sword ever so slightly. “Hermes kids are naturally good fighters, you’ll be fine,” she reassured. “Just trust me.”

“Oh, I trust you fine, I just don’t trust myself. I mean, have you seen me try to do the climbing wall? I think half of these bruises are just from that, but yeah, let’s add a deadly weapon, and I know Hermes kids are usually naturally good fighters, but we’re also supposed to be naturally faster and more agile than most others, and I’m clearly not, seeing as this bruise on my knee is from tripping over a branch yesterday and this one is from—”

“Robin. Just get up here.”

Robin trudged to join Nancy up front, wincing as she grabbed the bronze sword from the top of the pile. The weapon felt heavy in her hands, and awkward in her grip, as though she was not the person to be holding it. In fact, she could probably name ten other people in the group that were better swordsmen than she was.

“As I was saying,” Nancy continued and squared up. “This is all a matter of strategy. Just watch how Robin reacts to my motions.”

Robin, unsurprisingly, did not react well to Nancy’s advances, as within minutes her sword fell to the ground with a metallic clatter. “Sorry, I just—it looked like you were going to kill me,” Robin forced out as she scrambled to pick up her weapon.

Nancy shrugged off the comment, and instead turned back to the group. “When my sword hit Robin’s, the angle of contact made it so the tip of my blade seemed incredibly close to coming in contact with her chest. Thankfully, I wouldn’t ever kill Robin, but that isn’t to say other people wouldn’t try to—and that goes for any of you. However, had Robin repositioned her angle of contact, my wrist would have been twisted at such an angle that she would have had the upper hand,” she explained, before turning back to Robin. “Let’s go again.”

Though every part of her told her to run, Robin grabbed her sword off the ground and squared up, attempting to level with Nancy despite being a few inches taller than her. It was all a matter of strategy, she kept reminding herself after the first strikes. Watch the wrist, and her stance, and it would finally make sense.

All of a sudden, it was like the instincts that had been asleep for so long finally awoke from hibernation, and Robin found herself tapped into a secret sixth sense. It was as though she was pulled out of her body and given superpowers; replaced with a version of herself that could hold her own in battle. Every hit towards her was blocked, and Nancy seemed to be fired up with a new sense of determination. It was…almost attractive? If such a word could be used to describe a girl at the other end of a deadly weapon. The glint in her eyes and the mid-morning light reflecting off her ponytail made Nancy seem like the paintings and drawings Robin had seen in classes of ancient warriors (which she supposed made a bit of sense, given Nancy’s parentage)—powerful and authoritative on one hand, but ethereal and other-worldly on the other.

Then, the cool pressure of Nancy’s sword pressed against Robin’s throat, the tip of the blade landing right below her chin and knocking her out of her thoughts. “You…said you wouldn’t kill me,” Robin forced out, swallowing heavily against the point.

Nancy dropped her sword, the fiery gleam in her eyes glowing brighter. “I did,” she acknowledged. “Always have to be two steps ahead of your opponent, Buckley,” she added as she placed the weapon back in the pile.

Robin grumbled out her response, hoping that Nancy couldn’t hear how she was distinctly mocking her, before taking off her armor one piece at a time. “You know there were people actually willing to help you, right?”

“I did,” Nancy hummed. “But I knew you could do it.”

Robin rolled her eyes. “You could have killed me!”

“I wouldn’t have,” Nancy insisted, her formerly monotonous voice softening. “Will you meet me at the lake tonight before lights out?”

Robin scoffed, bending down to tighten the laces on her boots. “So you can kill me once and for all? Or leave me for the cleaning harpies?”

“Robin,” Nancy sighed. “Do you trust me?”

Robin looked up from her boots, staring up at Nancy. The iciness in her eyes had melted, the cool blue becoming more like the color of a sunny day than that of bitter cold, and the hardened expression on her face had faded almost entirely.

Robin bit down on the inside of her cheek, before nodding. “I already told you, yes.”

When Robin told Steve about Nancy’s proposal at dinner, he seemed all too overjoyed for his friend to be thrown to the metaphorical wolves—trust or no trust. He insisted—several times—that he had no stake in the matter, nor had he mettled in the happenings between his two friends. He simply wanted to see the happiness between Robin and Nancy, and saw the potential for the two of them to bond.

Like Robin believed that.

Still, she let Steve fix her hair and critique her outfit, fine tuning everything from the way she tied her boots to the haphazard way she buttoned her shirt. “You’d think I was going out on a date,” Robin remarked with a laugh as he gave her one final look-over, but Steve remained silent and focused on his task, tongue wedged between his teeth.

“Good luck,” he said finally, nudging her towards the lake. “Don’t freak out.”

Robin’s eyes widened, her head whipping back to face Steve. “Freak out? Why would I freak out? What’s going on that would make me freak out? You told me this would be fine and she wasn’t going to kill me and I could trust her and—”

“Just go! You’ll see!” he insisted, giving her another push. “Good luck! Have fun!”

Robin bit back a scowl. “I hate you!” she called over her shoulder, before heading down the hill to the beach.

When she reached the beach, she was stunned to find the terrain not set up for her inevitable doom, but rather a candlelit spread of a blanket and strawberries, with Nancy sitting on one end. Robin once again considered the fact that she may in fact be on a date, but given the way Nancy was idly studying her knife, she couldn’t be too sure.

“Uh…hi,” Robin greeted awkwardly, approaching the blanket.

In the dim light, Nancy’s face brightened. “Robin, you came!” she smiled.

“You invited me, and I said I would,” Robin answered, her gaze shifting from the knife to Nancy’s face. “You…aren’t going to kill me, right?”

Nancy frowned, then remembered the weapon in her hand. “What? No, I’m just looking this over for my brother and forgot to bring it back to him. Something about aerodynamics.”

“Wouldn’t that be the job of the Hephaestus cabin?”

“You’d think so,” Nancy laughed, “but here I am,” she added, before gesturing to the blanket. “Come sit.”

Robin settled onto the other side of the blanket, her limbs awkwardly pulled into her body. “That’s good to know, at least,” she breathed out. “But…why exactly did you invite me here?”

“Steve didn’t tell you?” Nancy asked. Robin shook her head. “Figures…son of Aphrodite’s all for romance except when it comes to his friends. Or his own life, I guess.”

Robin laughed, stretching out her legs and leaning back on the blanket. “I know! I mean, seriously. He’s been pining for—I don’t even know how long and he still refuses to make a move,” she grinned. “Wait…romance? This—this is a date?”

“Is that okay?” Nancy asked hesitantly. “I’ve had a crush on you since you got here, and I know how stupid that sounds, but I’ve just been trying to figure out a time to talk to you since you seem to be actively avoiding me, so I planned to spar with you and ask you to meet me here. Steve, uh, actually suggested it. Not everything, just the set up.”

Robin exhaled, staring out at the water. “Figured,” she noted, before turning to Nancy. “I was only avoiding you because I’ve thought you were so perfect and smart and gorgeous since I got here, and every time I was around you I made a fool of myself. You didn’t do anything wrong, I was just trying to avoid embarrassing myself around you more than I already had.”

“I see,” Nancy said softly, her gaze fixated on the water. “If you’re still hungry, you can have some of the strawberries. I had to bribe the satyrs into giving these up, crops are relatively scarce this time of year.”

Robin frowned. “They can’t use magic to make them grow all year long?”

“I guess not.”

Robin turned back to face Nancy, her figure shadowy in the dim light. It would be so easy, Robin realized, to kiss her. But she hadn’t kissed anyone before, much less anyone like Nancy. What if she did the wrong thing; went in the wrong direction and ended up hitting her head against Nancy’s so their once romantic moment is ruined by her clumsiness? Or what if she uses too much tongue, or too little, or her kisses are too wet, too dry, too sloppy, too tense, too everything that could go wrong?

“Are you okay?” Nancy asked suddenly.

Robin blinked, her attention drawing back to reality. “What? Yeah, I’m fine…I’m good.”

“Are you cold? We can head back,” Nancy offered.

“No, I—“ Robin forced out, before turning sharply and grabbing Nancy’s face. Without much reconsideration, she slammed her lips against Nancy’s, taking in the sweet taste of strawberries that lingered on the skin like the last bits of sunlight in summer. To her surprise, kissing was natural—incredibly so. Nancy relaxed into the gesture, moving against Robin in effortless harmony. Where Robin was cautious and reserved, careful to not make the wrong move, Nancy charged ahead, reading Robin’s body language and moving along as if this was second nature to her.

“We should get back,” Nancy said against Robin’s lips after what felt like an eternity of blissful kissing.

Robin sighed, rubbing her hand over her lips. “Yeah, probably…” she frowned, looking at the smear of lipstick on the back of her hand.

“But this was fun,” Nancy said, clearly noticing Robin’s somber expression. “Maybe we can have Steve set something else up for us,” she joked, her smile bright in the darkness.

Robin groaned, picking up Nancy’s basket of strawberries and blanket before passing them to her. “Ugh, don’t give him any ideas,” she muttered. “But that would be nice.”

“See you tomorrow for sparring?”

Robin grimaced, rolling out some tightness in her shoulders. “As long as you don’t pull another stunt like today on me.”

Nancy grinned. “No promises.”

#maybe ill post this on ao3 once i have a title and revise it #but for now enjoy #i wanted to post this by the end of today so i did make my goal #sort of #stranger things #robin buckley #nancy wheeler #ronance #nancy x robin #steve harrington #melodicchaos fics

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