Ronance Oneshots! (And other ST oneshots!)

Oneshot 12- Frozen on the edge of water // Ronance

"Thalassophobia (from Greek thalassa θάλασσα, "sea", and phobos φόβος, "fear")[1] is the persistent and intense fear of deep bodies of water such as the sea, oceans, pools, or lakes."
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Nancy starts developing anxiety and what she later acknowledges as fear, in 1983 after Barb dies in Steve's pool. Years later, this is only elevated after having to swim to the bottom of Lover's Lake to go through a Gate. She pushes these feelings down, and the memories and reactions they cause. She forces them away when her friends suggest a party at a lake out of Hawkins for some ungodly reason. But what happens when no matter how hard she tries, she just can't deal with this by pushing it away and pretending it isn't a real fear? What happens when one Robin Buckley helps her?
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Notes: Nancy's POV, Panic Attack, Developing a fear, Mentioning trauma, Hurt/Comfort, Comfort, Fluff, Light angst I think?
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Word Count: 8,374

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Nancy used to love swimming.

She used to enjoy playing in the water with Mike and Holly on family trips to beaches or pools. Even when she got older, she'd still begrudgingly go along to rare family outings, enjoying the moments of floating on the water, swimming back and forth, or being able to splash Mike whenever he'd be annoying.

Until highschool. Until November 1983.

Nancy hasn't even been in a pool since before then. Hasn't been in water outside of a bathtub or shower. Not including Lover's Lake of course. But honestly, that was a miracle. After that entire ordeal, she hardly believed she'd actually managed to dive into the lake and to the bottom just to follow Steve Harrington.

She thinks, perhaps, her... not fear, surely not, but anxiety, around large bodies of water, wasn't as bad until then. Sure, she'd avoided pools and pool parties and trips to beaches before that, as much as she could, after Barbara's death — because at least she could link the start of it all to that and her aversion to Steve's pool now — but she could tolerate it. She'd been to a beach once with her family. Hadn't entered the water, of course, but had managed to sit on the beach and ignore the way her heart raced when she'd look out at the water and get flashbacks to the night she was 'busy' when Barb died.

But after swimming to the bottom of Lover's Lake? That had only made her 'anxiety' worse. It's not a fear, it can't possibly be a fear. In part, due to the fact Nancy refuses to believe she's developed a fear of something as dumb as water. Also, due to the fact, it isn't water, is it? She can take a bath just fine. She can look at water and she can shower. She knows she can do those things. They've never been a problem.

The anxiety and... maybe also fear she feels when imagining being in a pool or looking at pools, is just because her childhood best friend died in one, even if it wasn't via drowning. The same goes for lakes— it's just because struggling to breathe and going through a portal at the bottom of a lake into the Upside Down, was probably traumatizing for them all. It doesn't matter that maybe she felt the same response for lakes too, even before that, just now both responses are worse. It doesn't matter that her anxiety and possible fear also includes looking at photos of the sea or ocean or going to beaches and looking out at the deep water. No, that's just her brain confusing things. She has completely rational reactions to specifically lakes and pools and it's fine. It's manageable. Sure, they've gotten worse, but it's nothing she can't handle. She just gets a bit anxious, maybe panics a little, but nothing worse. Maybe she hasn't exactly gone to any pools or lakes or such since Lover's Lake to prove it's 'just a bit of anxiety' but she doesn't exactly want to test that. Besides, it's not like anyone she knows besides her family — whom she can always make excuses about now, as an adult herself — goes to beaches or lakes anymore. And Steve is the only person she knows with a pool and he also barely has it full anymore since that night years ago (see, Nancy isn't the only one that was affected by that, at least).