Chapter Text
The Wheeler garage was saturated with heat and electricity. As soon as the door closed, Robin had pinned Nancy against the cold wall; the jolt knocked down an old poster, dust billowed, but they couldn’t have cared less. The world shrank to the space of their bodies, the mist of their breaths, the animal urgency burning inside them. Robin crashed her mouth onto Nancy’s with a hungry, almost clumsy violence, breathless with excitement, as if she were already starved for air. Nancy’s hands tightened at the back of Robin’s neck, nails digging into her skin, tracing electric arcs down her spine. Robin half-lifted her, pressing her against the icy wall; the contrast between the cold and the fire made her shudder all over.
They kissed hard enough to bruise their lips, with no restraint, no shame; Robin’s tongue probed for every weakness, explored, tasted Nancy’s sweetness, and every muffled moan rang louder than any siren outside. Nancy let out a guttural moan, surprised by the brutality of their own desire, which vibrated against the garage door, made damp by their fever. Their cheeks were flushed to bursting, their hearts galloped on the verge of syncope, sweat already beading at their temples, and their hands wandered everywhere, frantic, clumsy, starving for contact. They bit, tasted, laughed between stolen kisses, like puppies discovering both rough play and tenderness.
Adolescent awkwardness made every gesture too big, too intense, too much: Robin’s fingers wandered beneath Nancy’s t-shirt, brushing her skin, drawing shivers along her ribs, gripping her hip, pulling her close with the strength of certainty. Nancy’s hands slipped under Robin’s jacket, holding her as if she could pass right through, until their hips crashed together in an uncontrollable, mechanical, instinctive movement. Their legs tangled, searching for balance, finally toppling onto a toolbox in a strangled laugh; but nothing stopped them.
The garage air was thick with that unique scent: dust warmed by the afternoon sun, old bicycle oil, and above all, skin, sweat, fruity shampoo, the perfume clinging to Nancy’s collar, Robin’s animal heat. The atmosphere became unbreathable, as if every cubic inch of oxygen was saturated with their brand-new love, too powerful to be contained. Their breaths mingled, sped up, cut off; Robin felt her stomach twist with joy and desire, her mind blank, the world reduced to the damp heat of skin under her palms, the sound of their breathing, the taste of a tooth bumping a lip.
It was puppy love, but wild, ready to sweep everything away. The excitement overwhelmed them, as if everything might tip over any second. Sometimes Robin laughed, tears of joy at the corners of her eyes, swept up in the absurd beauty of the moment; Nancy whispered her name between kisses, her breath hot, her gaze sparkling with a love too new, too vast to stay still. It felt like living underwater, the two of them alone in the world, outside of time, a suspended instant in golden light and drifting dust, dizzy with happiness, wild with it, whole, shameless, and on the verge of devouring each other completely.
And in this chaos, in this intoxication, the rest of the world waited: the clock, lurking in the shadows, patient, ready to swallow up their happiness with one minute too long.
Robin slid her fingers under Nancy’s t-shirt, feeling hot skin, the urgent pulse of blood, that unique tension of kisses you never dare in the light. Their bodies pressed, trembled, crashed together with the exuberant awkwardness of girls who want everything all at once, right now. They devoured each other, lips on fire, hands everywhere, and it wasn’t just about mouths: it was a claiming, an animal pact. The air vibrated with their excitement. The garage smelled of dust, skin, sweat, a hint of vanilla, of fear and of triumph.
Their breaths mingled, hot and messy, as if oxygen was never enough for their hunger to live, to feel, to tear themselves open to each other. Robin’s head spun, drunk on the scent of Nancy: everything was stronger, closer, saturated, every inch of skin sending shocks under the surface. She felt the soft grain beneath her palms, the delicate hollow under Nancy’s ribs, the fragile curve of her back, the tension in her muscles, the way her belly tensed when she laughed, stifling a moan.
Nancy gripped Robin’s neck, her fingers lost in damp hair, pulling her close as if she might disappear, and her other hand held Robin’s waist, guiding, holding, teasing her. Nancy’s legs wedged between Robin’s, and the two of them rocked awkwardly, nearly tumbling into the stacked boxes, never once breaking their kiss. They bit each other’s lips, gasped for breath, and in Nancy’s eyes, Robin read all the panic and euphoria of first love: that fear of burning everything down, and the certainty that they had to, because they were alive, right here, right now, for real.
The daylight barely filtered in, sketching halos of suspended dust; every movement stirred up more of that golden haze, vibrating with them. The dull thud of a tool falling, the rustle of a t-shirt being pulled up, the almost animal gleam of a strangled laugh against a throat, every sound fed that adolescent fever, that radiant, unreasonable joy, too powerful to stay locked inside.
Fear, too, had its place in their embrace: fear of being caught, fear of going too far, fear of losing themselves; but neither cared. There was a tension in the air that felt like victory: the victory of daring, of being there, of risking everything. The taste of sweat on skin, the sweetness of vanilla, the bite of a new desire. Triumph. The wild joy of knowing you’re wanted, chosen, and the audacity of giving it back, right away, without delay.
It wasn’t just the Wheeler garage anymore, it was a temporary sanctuary, pulsing with drive and momentum. The heat, the dust, the flickering light; everything conspired to turn this moment into a private legend, a victory over the whole world. Nothing else existed. Not time, not fear, not even the clock lurking in the shadows, a mute witness to their brazen happiness.
It was only after long minutes, breathless, cheeks flushed, arms still tangled together, that they stopped. Nancy held Robin back by her chin, looking her straight in the eye; as if to check she was still there, real, alive, desirable enough to burn for. Robin was panting, hair plastered to her forehead, and she flashed a wild, fierce smile before murmuring:
“I think time just stopped, right now.”
Nancy let out a low laugh.
“Not yet. But I have what it takes to make it stop.”
And only then did the clock become the center of the world.
The grandfather clock had no business being in the Wheeler garage. It swallowed the light; every pane of glass, every brass molding drank in the afternoon until the room looked like a basement at noon. Nancy had dragged it in with a rope and a purpose; Robin had followed, armed with a hundred jokes, each one dying in turn as the clock refused to reflect any of them.
“It’s not the Creel clock,” Nancy whispered, her breath still uneven, cheeks marbled with pink. “It’s from an estate sale out by the Sattler quarry. Same model, same era. I just want to… test something.”
“Test something like: check if time exists? Because personally, I’m pro-time.” Robin came closer, hands still shaking, lips swollen from kissing. “Or test something like: we’re risking a curse for the sake of the plot?”
Nancy’s mouth twitched. “Both can be true.”
The dial, faded, looked like a moon. The minute hand bore a notch halfway around, like a scar. The pendulum hung motionless, though no one had stopped it. Robin searched for her reflection in the glass and saw only the wash of light behind her, like a door left ajar on a winter’s day.
“The seller said it chimed at the wrong hour,” Nancy added, kneeling to unlock the trap at the bottom. “And sometimes, the room would smell like a thunderstorm. That’s all.”
“That’s not ‘all’, that’s the trailer for a horror movie.” Robin laid her palms on the wood and felt a faint vibration, as if the thing had a heartbeat too slow for any human room. “Okay. So what’s the test?”
Nancy pulled a small recorder from her bag, a reporter’s toy, scratched by use and the bottom of her backpack. She switched it on, her voice soft and professional: “October third. Control environment: Wheeler garage. Subject: E.R. & Co. grandfather clock, 1949. Hypothesis: the chime corresponds to something we can… interrupt.”
“Interrupt a curse,” Robin corrected. “Great. I just happened to have a slot open between math and my existential dread.”
They stood shoulder to shoulder. The dust floated in the golden slant of light from the window, every mote in slow orbit like a planet. Somewhere in the house, the phone rang and fell silent. Farther away, the neighborhood breathed leaves.
The clock gave its first tick.
Not a hacking cough from an old mechanism kicking back to life. A sharp, deliberate sound, like a fingernail tapping on bone. Robin flinched. Nancy didn’t.
“Did you wind it up?” Robin asked.
“No.”
Tic.
A draft found them; no real source, just a sudden coolness curling around their ankles. Robin figured Indiana in October liked to put on a show. The garage smelled of wet coins.
“What if we don’t need to touch it?” Nancy murmured. “What if it’s the one that… chooses?”
“Like a cat,” said Robin, “or your mom’s approval.”
Tick. Tick.
The pendulum moved. With a sort of offended elegance, as if it were being forced to attend a party after months of being forgotten on the guest list. Robin watched the brass disk sweep left, then return, left, then return, until its movement seemed to write a second draft across the room.
“Nance,” she said softly. “We can stop.”
Nancy took her hand without looking, and Robin let their fingers fit together. It was always like that; Nancy never needed to aim to find her, Robin never needed proof to believe her. The tiny reels inside the recorder spun on, a subtler clock nested within the big one.
The first chime wasn’t a note. It was the sound a wall makes in a thunderstorm; the whole house inhaling a breath beneath the weather. Then the bell found itself, and the tone rose, clear, brassy, and wrong. It rang once, and the light in the garage seemed to shift all at once, dragging them along with it.
Second chime. The air rippled. The Hawkins Tigers poster curled at the corner. Robin felt a pressure behind her eyes, like a forgotten name on the tip of her tongue.
Third chime. Nancy squeezed. “Don’t listen too hard,” she said, and Robin would have laughed if laughter had anywhere to land.
Fourth chime. Something moved inside; not a gear, not a weight. A shadow, an afterthought: the shape of a staircase descending where the pendulum should be. Robin saw it for a visual flash, like thunder made visible, then the glass became just glass again. She blinked dust from her lashes. She kept breathing because Nancy was breathing.
Fifth. The storm smell grew teeth. Robin tasted iron, with a kind of ironic clarity. She wondered if this was how you felt right before floating. Right before the world chose you.
Sixth,
The door to the house swung open. Karen Wheeler appeared with a basket of laundry like a fleet, then stopped. “Oh,” she said, in the calm, well-bred tone of a woman who had decided things would remain ordinary. “Are you girls working on… a school project?”
“Time,” said Nancy, too fast. “Physics.”
“How exciting.” Karen’s gaze lingered on the clock the way you look at the blue of a stranger. “Don’t scratch the floor.”
The door closed again. The seventh chime seemed smaller for being interrupted. Robin’s shoulders dropped a fraction. Nancy exhaled.
At the eighth, the glass fogged over. Not outside, as a breath might. From the inside, a soft bloom of frost, the kind that draws ferns on windows. Letters formed, thin and precise, a diligent student’s handwriting:
WHO WILL YOU BE WHEN THE HOURS RUN OUT?
The ninth never came. The pendulum hung, mid-swing. The light stopped moving.
“Okay,” said Robin. “I vote for: ‘Alive and making out with my very explicit girlfriend.’”
Nancy’s mouth curled into a smile that didn’t quite reach. “Good thesis.”
Her voice had taken on that low tone she used when remembering a fear and deciding to move forward anyway. She set the recorder down and moved toward the glass. Her reflection didn’t follow. She found herself face-to-face with the frost, so close her breath left no mark on her side.
“This town thinks it knows who we’ll be,” Nancy said to the clock. “It writes it on you and dares you to erase it. But time hasn’t stopped for us before, and it’s not going to stop now.”
The frost brightened. A bead of water ran upward, against gravity.
Robin’s palm began to prickle where she was holding Nancy’s hand. She looked down. A thin red thread ran along their intertwined fingers, bright as stage magic string. She didn’t let go. “It’s trying to pair things,” she said. “Sounds and storms. Fear and names. Alone and, ”
“, together,” Nancy finished.
The tenth chime fell like a weight set down. The letters blurred, then rewrote themselves:
NAME THE TRIBUTE.
Robin felt it before she thought it: the clock wanted a price. That, at least, was ordinary. Monsters made contracts when their teeth got bored.
“Not you,” she blurted, immediate, fierce.
Nancy’s eyes shone. “Not you either. And no one we love.” Her attention returned to the glass. “Here’s what we’ll offer you,” she said; calm again, and all the more dangerous for it. “We give you what you already have. We sacrifice the hour you tried to steal. You can keep the ninth, the one we never heard.”
The garage waited. Even the dust seemed to pause, each mote suspended, wondering whether it was dust or stars.
The clock refused with a hiss, not a sound, but a shiver in the wood that meant no.
Robin straightened, shoulders open, breath steadying. She was always braver when Nancy was in the room; courage ricocheted between them until it became its own weather. “And the story?” she said, surprising herself. “You can keep the story people tell about us. The one where we’re the wrong kind of girls who don’t last. You can keep the lie.”
Nancy’s head turned, surprised and tender in the same heartbeat. It made Robin want to speak more softly to the entire world.
The frost trembled. The pendulum restarted with a sigh. On the glass, a new sentence appeared, sharper, impatient:
NAME THE TRUE THING.
“Fine,” said Nancy. She leaned in until her lips nearly brushed the glass, so close Robin could see the clean line of her jaw reflected in the brass circle. “The true thing is this: we are not alone. We never have been. I know who I am when the hours end. I am the one who is still holding her hand.”
Robin felt the thread between their fingers heat up, a warm burn shaped like a promise. She let the words rise from the place that always surprised her with its steadiness. “And I am the one who answers when she says my name.”
“Nancy,” said Nancy.
“Robin,” Robin answered.
The eleventh chime came like a sunrise you’d forgotten to wait for. The frost retreated, melting into light. For a single breath, the glass held two reflections: a Robin and a Nancy side by side, cheeks flushed with cold and courage; and behind them, the long shadow of a staircase that led nowhere good. Then the shadow blinked and vanished. The pendulum resumed its ordinary discipline. The metallic smell faded into dust and oil.
They didn’t speak right away. Beyond the garage, an airplane stitched the silence back together.
Finally, Nancy switched off the recorder. Her hand shook once, a small aftershock. Robin caught it in both of hers.
“I don’t think it wanted our time,” Nancy said, her voice rough. “It wanted our definitions.”
“Let it starve,” Robin replied, and then, because the world hadn’t ended and that felt like permission, she kissed Nancy, quick and sure, like a postscript written in a clean, decisive hand.
When they pulled apart, the clock struck twelve. Perfectly normal. The hour fell, and did not try to choose them.
“Data,” Nancy said softly, the familiar spark back in her eyes. “We have data.”
“Yeah. Data point one: curses hate it when you love out loud.”
Nancy laughed, the sound sharpening into full sunlight. “Do we put that in the physics report?”
They rolled the clock against the back wall and covered it with a tarp. The room warmed as if the thermostat had just remembered them. Robin scribbled on a strip of tape: DO NOT TOUCH, HAUNTED (BUT IN THERAPY), and stuck it to the cover. Nancy complained, smiling.
They went inside for coffee and whatever Karen had inevitably prepared; Karen always prepared something. The house smelled like cinnamon instead of storms. Robin cast one last glance at the quiet bulge beneath the tarp and slipped an arm around Nancy’s waist, that ordinary kind of boldness.
Who will you be when the hours end? the clock had asked.
This, Robin thought, answering by the simple act of existing: the girl who keeps choosing the other girl, hour after hour, as if time were a string and they had decided to hold the same end.
A silence fell. Time seemed frozen, breath suspended, and in the half-light, the clock let out an impossible growl, a slick vibration that made the walls tremble. The light flickered, warping the edges of things, as if everything were buckling under an invisible heat.
Nancy felt the first drop before she saw it. A cold, heavy, sticky streak fell from the ceiling: a black, viscous thread, almost alive, dripping straight onto her collarbone. She tried to scream, but the sound died in her throat. Robin felt the same thing, a warm, clinging substance sliding slowly down her temple, seeping under her skin like a bite of darkness. They turned, but it was already too late.
The ceiling was sweating. Everywhere, the veins of the wood split open to let this thick liquid bead and spill, the color of spoiled blood or tar. The walls, the floor, the clock’s glass, everything was being coated in writhing filaments, alive, crawling over their shoes, climbing their legs. It was freezing, and yet burning: the sensation of being swallowed by a nightmare, trapped in the web of an invisible monster.
Robin felt the liquid slip into her mouth, pour down the back of her throat. It tasted of rusted metal, of salt, of something primal and afraid. She tried to tear the substance from her skin, but her fingers slid uselessly over the nauseating slickness, and with every movement it covered her more, climbing, coiling around her wrists, her waist, yanking her backward, almost burrowing beneath her skin. Beside her, Nancy was choking, fighting the black filaments winding around her throat, slipping between her teeth, into her nostrils, forcing her mouth open in a soundless scream.
Their eyes rolled back, their bodies arched with pain and panic. The substance crawled under their skin; black veins bloomed and pulsed, swelling into infected lines across their necks, their arms, up to their cheeks and foreheads. Strange shapes, like roots, raced beneath the flesh, bulging, throbbing, ready to burst.
Visions poured in: red flashes, mouths opened on soundless screams, memories twisted by pain. Robin felt her own hand turn against her, clawing at her chest, then her arm, as if she were no longer in control of anything. Nancy tried to speak, to resist, but her jaw snapped shut and opened on its own, pulled by the filaments that forced her to smile, to widen her eyes.
A wet sound followed: the black, animated liquid seeped into their ears, their eyes, like a living tide. They watched each other transform, Robin, mouth stretched wide, dark streams spilling from her lips, eyes bloodshot, pupils swallowed by darkness; Nancy, face burning, fingers splayed by pain, filaments coiling around her tongue, emerging from her nose, plunging down her throat and bursting from the corner of her eye in a bloody froth.
Their backs arched, their limbs slammed against the floor, and the entire room echoed with wet sounds, the slap of fluids, flesh tightening, tendons vibrating, small cracks of shifting bone. The whole garage had become a living womb, where they were devoured, dissolved, swallowed from the inside.
Inside their heads, Vecna’s voices crept in, whispering horrors, promises of death, abandonment, power. They tried to cling to each other’s hands, but even their fingers were being overtaken by black veins, sticky scabs, skin burning alive.
And in one final spasm, the filaments burst beneath the skin, releasing jets of black matter that splattered the floor, the clothes, the light itself. One last gasp, one last shared heartbeat, and their eyes opened onto a void where they were no longer anything but hosts for the curse.
The room fell back into silence, saturated with viscous shadows and remnants of living flesh. Time itself had ceased to exist.
Then everything vanished at once. No more black fluids, no more filaments, nothing. Silence crashed back into the garage like a guillotine. But the pain remained, atrocious, scattered through every nerve: a crawling burn that still prickled under the skin like cold needles. The sensation of having been violated, invaded, split open and sealed raw again clung to their guts. The air had become unbreathable, thick with a putrid, metallic taste that stuck to the throat and palate. A sewer-like flavor lingered on the tongue, mold, ash, an aftertaste that wouldn’t fade, not even after a thousand glasses of water.
Robin was the first to move, or rather, to try. She trembled, hands slick with sweat, heart pounding in her ears. Her throat was dry, her mouth pasty, and beneath her clothes she felt traces everywhere of an invisible liquid: a damp suction, an irritating itch crawling up her arms, between her legs, everywhere the substance had touched her. She was still shaking, chilled to the bone, every muscle protesting even the smallest movement.
Nancy lay on her back, blinking, breathing raggedly, involuntary tears running into her hairline. At first there was only pain, shock, the abominable taste of what they had just endured. Then came something new, strange, insidious: a moist, rising warmth, diffuse, like a tingling deep in her belly. Something urgent, unsettling, almost pleasant had slipped inside her. Her skin felt dusted with a fine golden powder, a kind of invisible pollen settling into every pore, entering through her nostrils, her throat, her mouth. Her breathing quickened without her understanding why, shame mixing with involuntary arousal, an animal hunger she was not responsible for. Nancy had the sharp sensation of being manipulated from the inside, as if her hormones were being hijacked by a foreign hand, and despite the disgust, despite the memory of the shock, she felt desire impose itself, flood her, overwhelm her, tear a moan from her against her will.
Robin, on the other hand, hovered on the edge of panic. She felt a tingling too, a new presence, but it wasn’t arousal. It was cold. Tight. It pushed beneath her skin like a cramp being born and swelling, an unknown mass rising, blooming, threatening to rupture. Between her legs, something was waking, swelling, but the sensation was neither gentle nor familiar. It was wrong, painful, as if her own body had become foreign, invaded by something monstrous. Robin, a virgin, felt fear first, then shame, then a raw, animal terror. She tried to press her thighs together, but the sensation grew, dull, insistent, inexplicable.
The vile taste in her mouth, the cold sweat, the burning skin, everything blended together: shame, fear, loss of control. Beside her, Nancy was gasping, her breath growing faster, rougher, unable to contain the surge of irrepressible desire, while Robin, curled in on herself, felt her abdomen tighten and a new, deep, burning point form in the most intimate place, without understanding, without wanting to understand, what had just been born inside her.
Nothing had truly disappeared. Everything remained, in their bodies, in their memories, in their skin. The curse was only beginning.
Robin tried to speak, to call Nancy, but her voice stuck in her throat, raw, strangled by the acid still burning her mouth.
“NNancy… are you… are you okay?” she managed, breathless, each word like a stone.
Nancy didn’t answer right away. Lying there, eyes wide open, she was trembling from head to toe, wracked by spasms that mixed fear and want. Her mouth opened and closed silently, as if she couldn’t get enough air. Her gaze drifted into emptiness, then flicked toward Robin with animal terror. But beneath the terror, something else shone through, a crazed hunger, a tension so sharp that Nancy seemed unable to remain upright or even lying down. All her energy converged in her belly, her chest, her pelvis; she panted, cheeks wet, her gaze feverish.
“I… I don’t know…” she whimpered, her voice broken, torn between shame and burning need. “It burns… I want… I can’t… I can’t stop…”
Her legs rubbed together, her hand clawed at the floor, tears streaming, pleasure and fear entwined in a single choked-off cry. It seemed like only that sensation kept her alive, that without it, there would be nothing left but horror, emptiness, death.
Robin backed away, stunned. She didn’t recognize Nancy anymore. She couldn’t understand what was happening. In her own body, pain and fear looped endlessly, but something else was rising, unexpected, impossible. A shiver this time from inside, low in her belly, a heavy pulse that throbbed with each heartbeat, different from any excitement she’d ever known; deeper, sharper, more terrifying.
Robin stumbled toward the door, fighting for breath. She wanted to get out, to scream, to get help, to find daylight, safety, normality. But when her fingers found the handle, the sensation exploded. First a freezing jolt, then a rush of heat, then that pressure, that swelling, that burning tingle between her legs, stronger than before, uncontrollable, as if a foreign force were commanding her. She couldn’t think anymore, her entire focus narrowed to her lower belly, her flesh, to an organ that had never existed, but now insisted itself, insistent, alive, throbbing with its own will.
Robin was suffocating.
No… no, please, not this… not now… not like this…
Her hands shook. She wanted to resist, to cry out, to run, but instead, an irresistible need took over: she had to see, she had to touch, she had to understand, even through panic. Crying, her chest tight with shame and dread, she pulled down her pants, half-unconscious, overwhelmed by fear and sensation, as if her own body had become the stage for a monstrous, unstoppable transformation.
It wasn’t arousal anymore. It was something else. Something pushing, growing, taking over. And deep down, Robin knew nothing would ever be the same again.
Robin had just pulled down her pants, trembling, her hands clammy and cold, when she felt the atmosphere change all at once: Nancy, until then crushed by confusion and arousal, suddenly seemed overtaken by an uncontrollable force. Her eyes shone with feverish, wild light, a blend of terror and primal hunger, and she sat up abruptly, nearly staggering, panting, mouth open as if she couldn’t get enough air.
For a moment, Robin wanted to retreat, regain some distance, but she didn’t have time, Nancy, starved, swept up, practically pounced on her, tearing at Robin’s pants with a motion as clumsy as it was ravenous. The sound of fabric ripping echoed in the garage, muffled only by the pounding hearts of the two girls, the tension in the air now unbearable, thick with electricity, fear, and a kind of anguished desire that no longer had anything rational about it.
Nancy buried her face between Robin’s legs, as if drawn by an invisible scent or energy, breathing hard, a guttural moan escaping her as she desperately gripped Robin’s hips. Her breath was burning, her tongue frantic, her whole face pressed to Robin’s sensitive skin, as if she wanted to soak up the very source of what tormented her. It was as if every particle of air around Robin’s body was enough to drive Nancy mad, making her pant, claw, moan; she rubbed her cheeks, her lips, her nose everywhere, insatiable, trembling with monstrous excitement, with animal hunger.
Robin, for her part, was utterly overwhelmed. Her mind screamed with panic, shame, confusion, but every inch of her body was wracked with uncontrollable surges, a weird, intense, unbearable pleasure shot through her legs, her belly, her back, up into her head. The sensation of being exposed, subjected to Nancy’s hunger, terrified and shook her, while also making her want to scream, to cry, to laugh, to beg for it to stop or to never stop. She no longer knew who she was, or what she wanted, or even what was happening to her; all that remained was the burn, the tension, this impossible urgency.