It's 7:30pm. The air is crisp and the sky is a cool grey as the night slowly nears. With each step drawing closer to the towering set of boulders in the middle of the woods, dried autumn leaves crunch beneath Monica's sneakers, and her eyes skim past trees for that familiar sight of short brown hair.
"Monica?" a voice called from a few steps further down the small slope.
"Who's asking?" she teases.
"Does cool loser ring any bells?"
The moment Monica passed another humungous rock, Robin appeared behind the heights of a much taller one, her hair clipped atop her head in untameable curls and her body framed with the blue and black dress from that day.
Robin's lips slanted with a crooked smile that made Monica catch her breath. But as if brought back to earth, her feet picked up and she slipped off her corduroy jacket, leaving her in a white butterfly-sleeved top.
"You're going to freeze."
She wrapped her jacket around Robin's torso.
"I was told I have nice shoulders so I'm showing them off. Besides I'm part reptile! I don't get cold."
"Don't get cold my ass." Monica tugged the jacket a little, assuring it was secure before letting go. When she took in the space around them, she noticed soft white fairy lights dangling from a tree branch and two paper crowns sitting on a much smaller round rock, one white and the other purple.
"What is all this?"
"I wanted it to look less lame," Robin frowns. "The lights were supposed to hang across the branches but I couldn't reach so I just closed my eyes, hoped for the best and threw."
"Okay... and throwing fairy lights in the middle of the woods is normal how?"
"We won't get prom," Robin rose her voice defensively. "You'll go with Billy—"
"That's done," Monica interjected what she knew was falling into incoherent rambles. She neared Robin, slipping her hand onto her waist under the jacket. "No more casual sex, no more deep conversations—"
"Really?" Robin's eyebrows upturn, feeling more emotional than anything else.
"No mullet in my prom photos," she shook Robin's hip gently, working up a small smile onto her face. "Although, I don't know how that one's going to go down with my mom."
"If she didn't like me before."
"I don't care what she thinks. Your opinion is all that matters to me."
Robin could see how much Monica meant it, just as much as she could feel her own heart swelling in the pit of her chest. "I like you," she spills, "and I don't mean sandbox friendship liking, I mean like like. I have liked you for so long I thought I might combust if I didn't say it any sooner. And I can't be your date to prom, just like you can't be mine, but there's no rule against having a prom of our own."
Monica let Robin slip away from her, too overwhelmed in the daze of her emotions to cling to her any tighter. Robin picked something up that she had placed on the rock with the crowns, something in a wrapper. "So..." Robin held up a ring pop wrapper. "Your corsage."
"Wow, it looks delicious."
"It's cherry flavoured," Robin forces an enthusiastic smile until her entire demeanour falls with it in a matter of seconds. She began to unwrap the packet. "I didn't know where to get corsages and I felt too stupid to ask my parents so I just suffered and thought up an alternative. This was the best I could come up with apparently."
Monica let her slip it onto her right middle finger. "I love cherries."
"Good. Me too. We already have so much in common, great!"
Monica laughed at Robin's ongoing nervous rambling. She walked over to the rock holding the crowns and slipped the wrapper behind it into what Monica assumed was a bag or something.
"So, I would now quickly like to call in the votes for prom queen first and foremost, and let me tell you, somehow by some crazy otherworldly chance, the count was entirely unanimous."
Monica rolled her eyes, her smile unmoving.
"Let's give a loud and welcoming hand to our new prom queen—Monica Haring!" She immediately followed it with obnoxiously loud cheering and enthusiastic clapping, and all Monica could think to do was curtsey, pinching an imaginary skirt whilst crouching her crossed legs.
Robin walked over with the purple paper crown, when Monica realised, "Wait, did you pick purple because it's the colour of my prom dress?"
Robin grit her teeth. "Potentially..."
Monica pursed her lips in her best efforts of containing her smile, but it didn't suppress her stare with a world of adoration oozing through her eyes. Robin wasn't sure anyone had ever stared at her that way before, but she took the opportunity to fit the crown onto Monica's head.
Monica scrunched up her nose.
Then once Robin began to lower her hands, she also lowered her voice and said, "Now feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe a speech is in order."
Monica didn't complain, instead she moved one feet in front of the other until she was standing on top of a bulky rock, feet from off the ground. When she turned to face the right way, Robin was already smiling at her from where she stood in Monica's jacket and a beautiful blue dress that matched her pale blue eyes.
"As you might imagine given the circumstances, I haven't prepared a speech, so I'm just going to speak from the heart." Monica noticed Robin's smile widen as she bit back a laugh, and Monica smiled, too.
She had the chance to say something and make it be the truest thing she had ever meant to the one person she wanted to hear it most, but she barely knew where to start.
"I was really excited to go to college," Monica says, "and I was excited to leave Hawkins and see the world beyond it. And I didn't even care if it wasn't all that it was made out to be in books or in movies, because the sheer fact that it wasn't Hawkins was enough."
Robin was listening closely, her smile shrinking as she took in every word. Monica spoke slow enough that she knew there was weight to what she was saying, so she showed her she saw that much and cared.
"But recently I had the fortune of spending time with someone that gave me a reason to actually miss my life here."
Robin took a deep breath, smiling sadly as she exhales.
"Which is a miracle and a half because I was so ready to up and leave it all behind for good." Monica pulled her lower lip between her teeth for just a moment. "So, when I do go to college—that is if I get in—"
"You will," Robin interjects.
"I'll be leaving a piece of me here," Monica raises her voice enough to speak over her, "and that's good enough of a reason to come back. Eventually. But then again, coming back will probably look like a one way ticket to Europe and lots of croissants in my foreseeable future."
Robin chuckles just enough that her eyes coat with tears she didn't know she had in her.
"Robin Buckley, you're my foreseeable future and all of my futures. When I think of myself ten years down the line I have no idea what in the hell I'm doing, I just know that I'm stood right next to you and that's enough for me if it's enough for you—"
"Yes!" Robin's voice croaks a little, shocking Monica. She cleared her throat. "Yes," she says more composed, approaching the rock Monica is elevated on. "It's more than enough for me. Hell, it's everything in between."
Monica smiled at the brunette practically breaking her neck to look up to her. But instead of getting down to kiss her, she jumped down to the ground and approached the rock across the empty space holding one more paper crown.
"In a shocking twist of events, the voting poll is entirely unanimous once again in its beckon for its latest prom king!" she announces dramatically to a teary eyed Robin as she wipes away one singular tear half of the way down her cheek.
Monica picked up the paper crown with both of her hands and slowly neared Robin. "But the real kicker is that for the first time in Skull Rock history we have a female prom king, and not only is she incredibly funny and extremely pretty, but she's also the downright raddest person you could ever know." She stops right in front of Robin, smiling a small and slanted smile. "Congratulations, Robin."
She slipped the crown over Robin's high curls and sat it comfortably above her temple. Then she stepped aside and gestured towards the high rock. "Take it away."
Robin stepped up, turning around as Monica took steps backwards until she was over a metre away in the same way Robin had once been.
Robin took a deep breath nervously, and Monica only waited, looping her thumbs in the belt buckles of her denim flares. She gave Robin a supportive smile.
"Where to even begin," Robin shrugs. "Uh..." she looked down at her red low-top converses peeking out from underneath her dress, clinking them nervously.
Monica tilted her head, trying to find Robin's eyes, and when she finally looked up, Monica's side smile widened and Robin's stomach tightened.
"Hawkins is the crappiest place on earth," she spills suddenly before before seeping into a rambunctious rant. "It reeks of cow manure basically all the time, there's no culture and everyone is going bored out of their minds repeating and living the same boring, uneventful lives over and over again."
Monica's eyebrows drew together.
"But over the course of these past two weeks I have been opened up to a whole new side of Hawkins. A beautiful new side of Hawkins at that. It's bright and it's hopeful and it's sacred."
But as her eyes shifted between Robin's that were so much darker from a distance, she smiled.
"Monica Haring... thank you for sharing it with me. You could have easily been totally stingy and mean and kept it all to yourself, but you didn't. And I don't know why, and maybe I never will, but I quite frankly couldn't care less because I'm just happy that you did."
Monica wasn't sure that Robin had breathed once during any of that until the end.
"I said that I've never been happier to not have a license and I meant it, I said that I can't imagine my life any other way and I meant it, and now I'm saying you're the greatest thing that's ever happened to me and I mean that too. I want you, I want Europe and I want our future together and I'm all in," her shoulders sunk as if she was melting with her words.
"For better or for worse," Monica agrees.
"Also," Robin finds her voice again, "there's something else."
Robin jumped from the rock she was stood on and headed to round rock the crowns once sat on. She reached behind it, the same way she did when she disposed of the wrapper, and pressed something, triggering the faint sound of a guitar: "A Case of You" by Joni Mitchell.
Monica wouldn't have been surprised if her legs gave in then and there.
Robin postured herself and walked right up to Monica, reaching out her hand once she was stood still a feet of space of away. "May I have this dance," she asks.
"You may," Monica replies, quickly adding a smile-ridden "idiot" under her breath.
She slipped her hand into Robin's and allowed herself to be dragged into the middle of the open space. Monica slipped her arms around Robin's neck and Robin secured her arms around Monica's waist, the both them holding one another close as they simply stared into each other's eyes.
Just before our love got lost you said... "I am as constant as a northern star," and I said, "Constantly in the darkness... Where's that at? If you want me I'll be in the bar..."
Monica searched Robin's face, trying her best to remember it well as she silently let herself remember every detail of this moment.
Oh, you're in my blood like holy wine...
You taste so bitter...
And so sweet...
"Thank you," Monica says.
Oh, I could drink a case of you.... darling, and I would...
"For all of this. This was successfully very romantic."
"That was what I was going for," Robin says. "I know it's not ideal. It isn't a movie date or a dinner reservation—"
"Which is exactly what makes it even more perfect," Monica smiles. "This is peaceful. Just us remember?"
Robin smiles, too, her anxieties diminishing. "I'm not sure I remember much of anything else," she admitted. Those few words felt more exposing that standing naked head to toe.
I remember that time you told me, you said, "Love is touching souls..." Surely you touched mine...
"Do you know what teenagers usually come to Skull Rock to do?" Monica narrows her eyes.
"Bury dead bodies?"
"Troubling answer yet shockingly close. They come to make out."
"Is that your pathetic way of asking to kiss me?"
"It wasn't pathetic, it was cautious!"
"I like pathetic! Especially when it's pathetic in a good way."
Monica heard her own voice ring in the back of Robin's: 'You're an idiot in a good way. You're crazy in a good way. You're weird in a good way.' She meant what she said that night about liking all the things about Robin that could easily be written off as bad qualities. But piled into a person like her, it could never come close.
"I like a lot of things about you," Monica says, suddenly feeling exposed as well.
"Do my paper crown making abilities happen to make the cut?"
Monica pretended to think about it for a moment, humming to herself. "It's a close second to the top of the list, I'd say."
Robin smirks, "Yeah?"
"Mhm."
"Then what's at the top?"
Monica took the cue to close the gap between them, and their bodies moulded together like so. The second their lips moved rhythmically to the tune distinctly their own, their bodies stopped swaying and only held each other instead, all to the gentle sound of Joni's voice running through their ears.
Oh, I could drink a case of you... darling...
Still I'd be on my feet, I would still be on my feet...