#robin pov

[hairmetal666]

"Is this always how they act?" Jonathan asks. He has to lean close and yell a little for Robin to hear him over the noise of the house party.

"Yup," she says.

She, Jonathan, and Argyle continue to stare at Eddie, sitting in an easy chair, Steve perched happily on his lap. Eddie has a whole bowl of bbq Lay's, and Steve will lean back for a chip, which Eddie feeds him with a smile.

"And they're definitely not dating?" Argyle asks when Steve leans back to whisper in Eddie's ear, mouth pressed close. It's deeply gratifying that they just got in from California and already they see it.

"Steve says no."

"You think he's lying?" Jonathan asks.

"I think he doesn't realize he likes Eddie yet."

Eddie tugs at Steve's hair, and Steve turns back, gives him a smile that's so intimate Robin can't stare directly at it. Instead, she turns to her friends, but Argyle is still watching Eddie and Steve. He's drumming his fingers against his chin, expression what Robin could only call mischievous.

"What are you planning?" Jonathan asks.

"Just helping some bros find true love."

Jonathan looks mildly concerned but before he can say anything, Nancy makes her appearance. And they're something, becoming something, and she cares about Eddie and Steve getting their shit together, but Nancy is smiling and she's so, so pretty. It's easy to get lost in the blue of her eyes and the sweep of her hair and forget about everything else.

---

A few hours later and they're all sitting around a coffee table in the basement, just the six of them. It's sort of funny, she thinks, how it always ends up being the six of them.

They're crossfaded already, but that hasn't stopped Eddie and Argyle from lighting another joint. Her thoughts have gone light and floaty, all that's holding her to earth the press Steve's leg and Nancy's hand against hers.

Argyle is sort of monologuing and she doesn't think any of them are paying much mind, but then he stops mid-sentence, grips Jonathan's shoulder tight enough that his knuckles go white. "Dudes. What if we played Truth or Dare?"

Nancy snorts. "Not on your life."

"I don't think I can move?" She says. She leans into Steve, sighing with contentment.

"I, for one, would love to see Buckley complete a dare," Eddie says.

She sticks her tongue out at him. "I've done plenty. Band kid, remember?"

"Ugh, curse the horny trumpeters." Eddie slumps on the coffee table in defeat.

"I'll have you know, they were very wholesome games."

Steve squints at her. "Wasn't there an orgy in someone's pool?"

She sniffs, looks away instead of answering, which makes everyone laugh.

"Speaking of sex," Argyle says. "No one catch your eye tonight, Harrington?"

"Wasn't really looking."

"That's new," Jonathan says.

Steve laughs. "I'm tired of hooking up."

He's told her that too, countless times. She thinks the real reason he hasn't dated in months is sitting right next to him, drumming his fingers on the coffee table.

"Maybe you've just lost your touch," Argyle says.

"I have not!" Steve clutches a hand over his heart. "If I wanted to, I could pull any girl upstairs."

"C'mon, my dude, no way you're that good."

"I was!" He looks to Robin, Nancy, Jonathan. "I was, back me up!"

"I don't know, Scoops wasn't your best work," she says.

"No, no, we said Scoops doesn't count! It was the hat. The outfit! I did fine after!"

"I happened to think the sailor costume was very cute," Eddie says.

"Thank you," Steve preens. He shifts away from her to lean into Eddie, who grins.

"I don't think we can trust Eddie's judgement here," Nancy says.

Steve points at her. "Yes, and I remember you being totally uninterested."

She squeaks in indignation, Robin smothering her own giggles behind her hand. "It was--it was hormones!"

"Yeah, very uninterested in me." Jonathan chimes in. There's a little second where no one reacts--the fact that Nancy was technically still with Steve when that happened ringing unspoken between them--before Nancy and Steve start to giggle.

"I've hooked up with everyone I've ever tried to," Argyle chimes in, nonchalant.

"No way," the whole group says.

"I've got the touch."

"C'mon, that literally can't be true just by like...stats," Steve says.

"Don't know what to tell you, my dude." Argyle's smile is smug. "I'm really good."

"You're just jealous," she tells him. She nudges his shoulder so he knows she's joking.

"No! Jealousy has nothing to do with it."

They erupt at that, calling out the obvious lie.

"I'm not upset!" Steve shouts over them. "I'm just saying, it didn't happen. Sorry, Argyle. You have bizzaro charm, but there's no way it has a 100% success rate."

"Sounds like jealousy to me, Stevie." Eddie cocks his head with a smirk.

"Harrington, you're so cute when you're competitive," Argyle says. "Anyway, it worked on--"

"Don't say Jonathan," Nancy, Steve, and Robin all say.

"Hey! Why not me?'

"Well, it's just--" Nancy waves her hand in the air. "You're. I mean. It's not hard."

Jonathan groans, hides his face in his hands as they laugh.

"I'll prove it to you," Argyle says to Steve. "100% success rate."

"What?"

"I'm going to seduce you."

"Oh, shit," she says.

She knows what's going to happen even before Steve puts his hands on his hips, awkwardly cause they're sitting, cocks an eyebrow, and says, "Okay."

Eddie grumbles something she can't make out, but Steve shakes his head, laughs. "Nah, it's just for fun, right?"

"Until it works." Argyle tosses his hair.

Steve rolls his eyes. "Gimme your best shot."

They rearrange around the table, Eddie and Argyle swapping places.

Everyone is quiet for a second, Steve reaches for his drink. "You got great hands, Harrington," Argyle says.

"I--oh, what?" Steve splutters. He goes a little pink, and Robin thinks it's the first time she's seen him this flustered by a compliment.

"Yeah." Argyle takes his hand, traces along his palm and knuckles. "Big. Strong. Like you could really take care of someone."

Eddie kicks the table, sending it rocking, scattering empty cups and chip bags. Steve is crimson, totally oblivious to Eddie's flailing.

"Thanks," he mumbles. He doesn't pull his hand away. Robin, everyone, is riveted.

"No one's ever told you that?"

"No. No one."

"That's too bad. It's probably all about your hair and your eyes and your body."

Steve smiles and it's one she recognizes, flirty and a little wicked. "You noticed my body?"

Argyle laughs. "Oh, c'mon, you know everyone notices that."

"Would you believe it if I told you I don't get enough compliments?"

"Not on your life."

Steve leans into him, giggles. "Well, worth a shot, right?"

"Always. You wanna know the first thing I noticed about you?"

"Ass, right?"

"It was how much you love your friends but you hide it behind a facade of disapproval. Made me think maybe you weren't used to the love you want to give being reciprocated."

They're all locked in on Argyle and Steve, but she notices Eddie flinch, move like he's about to stand, Nancy reaching out to stop him. She thinks, then, for the first time, that maybe this is mean to him. He doesn't know it's not real.

"Oh," Steve says. His voice breaks, a little, and her heart breaks for him. "I--oh."

"Your ass was the second thing I noticed," Argyle quips and the tension around the table breaks, Steve giggling.

With smooth confidence she never would have expected him to possess, Argyle cards his fingers through Steve's hair. "Just had to touch it for myself." His voice is soft.

"That all you want to touch?"

Argyle grins. "Not even a little bit."

She watches, stunned, as Steve leans in, face almost touching Argyle's. Eddie makes a noise, a pained cough, and Steve leaps to his feet.

"I can't kiss you!" He half-yells, stumbling.

"And why not?" Argyle asks. He's got a wild smile on his face.

"I'm in love with Eddie!" Steve's eyes are wide, panicked.

"I'm sorry," Steve says to him. "Eddie, I--"

But before he can get the words out, Eddie's climbing over the coffee table, sending drinks and snacks flying, the calls for him to get down ignored as he trips into Steve's arms.

"You love me?" Eddie asks.

"I'm sorry I couldn't say it before. I--got in my head about it and I--I hoped it didn't seem like I was leading you on because my words kept getting stuck, and--"

"Sweetheart." Eddie stops him. "I--" He breaks off, notices that the rest of them are raptly listening to the confession. "Do you want to go somewhere we can talk?"

They disappear upstairs, and she turns to Argyle in awe. "I can't believe that actually worked."

"What can I say, I'm a miracle worker. Are there more Doritos?"

---

Early in the morning, they're piled in Nancy's station wagon, Jonathan driving them home. She and Nancy are in the middle seat, Steve and Eddie in the back. Steve's curled against him, face pressed to his neck, hidden by a cloud of hair. She wants to ask what happened, how their conversation went, if they're official and how long Steve's known he's in love, but Nancy moves closer, head dropping to Robin's shoulder. Their fingers entwine and Robin closes her eyes, smiles.

"Tomorrow?" Nancy asks.

She nods. "Tomorrow."

[formosusiniquis]

Robin's Guide to the Care and Feeding of Your Newly Adopted Former Mean Girl

Happy @stevieweek everybody! This is Day One: Stobin with none of the bonus prompts, but keep an eye out cause i've got a few more incoming this week.

Robin Buckley & Stevie Harrington; Pre-Stevie Harrington/Eddie Munson WC: 9483 | T | No Archive Warnings Apply | Tags/Themes: transfem!Steve Harrington; Platonic Soulmates Steve & Robin; Robin Buckley is the Stevie Harrington Defense Squad

AO3

On July 4th, 1985, Steven Joseph Harrington died in the Starcourt Mall Fire. 

The story Robin Marie Buckley tells, after two weeks of hospitalization and an additional month in Indianapolis for “personal reasons,” when she returns to her senior year at Hawkins High a full week after the first day of school is one of abject heroism on the part of Steve.

It’s true, even if it isn’t the whole story. Just like it isn’t hard for her to play morose and avoidant, because that’s how she feels. She might know Dustin, but it’s too hard to spend much time with him and she doesn’t want to be the weird friendless senior who only talks to freshmen. She’ll leave that to Eddie Munson, who snatched Steve’s weird little child friends up only a few weeks into the first semester. 

Nancy and Jonathan avoid her as much as she does them, she doesn’t think they know what to do with the new girl in the know. It paints a picture, well she realizes later that it paints a picture, but she doesn’t want to sit at a table and eat her peanut butter and jelly sandwich while Nancy Wheeler’s big beautiful eyes are staring at her like she’s an article that’s half an inch too long and needs to be dissected while Jonathan Byers is also there.

So she drifts through the halls of Hawkins High like a ghost, she’s Cathy on the moors. Avoiding anyone who might try to ask her too many questions about the final days of Steve Harrington and Starcourt Mall.

Until the day she spots a baby blue jeep pulled into the Henderson’s driveway, a tall brunette unloading a single suitcase from the back. She’s got her bike across the road before she can even think of a game plan. A noise that’s almost like a scream erupting from her mouth the entire time she coasts over.

“You’re here, you’re here, you’re here!” It’s an uncharacteristic bit of grace, that lets her drop her bike to the ground and use its momentum to catapult herself into the other girl’s arms. Too excited for a second to remember that she’s in a place where small town gossip exists, and a new neighbor can fuel the mill for days.

But she enjoys her hug for a second before settling into a more appropriate character. She extends a hand, ignoring the laugh it gets her, “Welcome to Hawkins, I’m Robin, occasional Dustin babysitter.”

The girl’s smile pulls lopsided at her mouth, kissed with a bit of irony and undeniably charmed. “It’s nice to meet you Robin,” her voice is soft, and a little unsure. Wavering like Becky Simpson’s tone deaf oboe playing, unsure of what pitch and timbre to land on. “I’m Stephanie Henderson, Dustin’s cousin.”

The bit crumbles immediately between Robin’s fingers.

“Stephanie? You went with Stephanie? Are you kidding? We workshopped so many names!”

“I liked my name! But it’s weird apparently to be a girl named Steve.” She distributes finger quotes randomly throughout the sentence like Robin hadn’t been the one to say she didn’t know any girls named Steve. “Stephanie is pretty!”

Robin looks her best friend dead in the eye, unsurprised that there’s not a hint of humor even underneath the drama. “Never mind that it sure would be strange for Steve Harrington to die just for girl Steve who looks like she could be his cousin to move to town.”

“Affair baby,” Stephanie presents the solution with a flick of her hand. Robin notices that her nails are still chewed short, more noticeable  after they talked about what it would be like for her to grow them out and manicure them.

“Give me the whole name right now,” Robin demands, “I wanna hear how it sounds.”

Steph, cause they’re going to have to figure out nicknames immediately they just aren’t the kind of friends that can go around being Robin and Stephanie, kicks the curb with her scuffed up Nike. Her arms crossed across her middle accentuates the way her body has already started changing, Robin feels like a creep for a second for noticing her friend’s boobs before deciding that they weren’t the kind of friends with those kinds of boundaries.

“Stephanie Marie Henderson.”

“Oh my god!”

“Shut up, don’t even.”

“Oh. My. God.”

“You’re already making a big deal out of it, which it’s not.” Stevie insists.

“You stole my middle name, you’re so obsessed with me.” It’s the best thing she’s ever heard actually, that Stevie might be as into this friendship as she is. She’s always the friend that’s too much.

Stevie’s smile is small, shier than she’s used to seeing it. “Yeah well whatever Stephanie Robin sounds like a straight to VHS Winnie the Pooh movie character or some shit.”

Dustin comes scrambling out of the house before Robin can make another joke. “You were supposed to call before you left! Ma isn’t finished setting up your room, and Tews is stuck under your bed.”

They share a look, and Robin thrills a little that she has a friend that she can share looks with. “Henderson,” Stevie shouts, sounding a little more like she did this summer. “Are you really going to make me carry my own bags in? I'm a fucking lady, dickhead.”

“Sure don't fucking talk like one,” Dustin hollers back from the door, already trudging out of the house.

“Gonna have to work on your feminism,” Robin says. wondering what kind of weird shit a person would have to sort through when they realized they were transsexual. “Just because you're on estrogen doesn't mean your arms are atrophied.”

The butter-wouldn't-melt smile is still the same, even though her face looks softer. She hands off her suitcase, patting Dustin on the head as he visibly stumbles under the weight. “Don't drag it on the sidewalk, it's new,” she directs. 

He can't flip them off when it takes both hands to lift the luggage in his hand, “How are you more of an asshole, oh my god.”

“Is that anyway to talk to your cousin, Dustbunny?”

Dustin doesn't answer directly, but he's muttering under his breath the whole way to the house. 

“My ribs still hurt some when I'm doing heavy lifting,” Stevie says when he's out of earshot. “Better to be a high maintenance girl all of a sudden than someone he doesn't think he can count on.”

“Don't love the way you used girl in that sentence, Dingus.” Robin shoves at her shoulder, “Let's go look at your room, we can plan how you want to decorate.”

“I'm not saying I'm upset we got the job, Rob, just that it's weird the way Keith was acting. He always hated me, you know that. Before all this,” she gestures down her striped top, well Robin supposes she’s actually gesturing down at the way it hugs her figure, “he hated me. I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t spit on me if I was on fire.”

“That seems a little dramatic, but welcome to your first workplace sexism.” Robin gives Stevie a comforting pat. Hopeful that it communicates a ‘welcome to the bad parts of everyone knowing you're a girl’ and not how she’d been prepared to work some of that sexism to their advantage. But apparently Keith was charmed by Stevie’s list of favorite films, he’d even laughed when she said her favorite Star Wars movie was the one with the teddy bears. When they’d gone to pick out movies last week she’d heard him lecture a guy for five minutes on how it was Episode VI not ‘the third one.’

Stevie flips her hair, sending Robin a playful glare, “I’ve experienced sexism, thank you, have you already forgotten what I used to look like.”

“I’m sure he’ll go back to hating you once he realizes you working here is going to mean this is one more place that Henderson and the brats are always hanging around.” She went with Stevie to the arcade once and she almost understood why Keith always hid in the back when they walked in. 

“Probably, but at least then I can stop being nice to him. He’s such a-” Robin can hear the way Stevie swallows the rest of the sentence. A frustrated, red blush flooding her cheeks as she bites down on her bottom lip. It’s confusing, the small shake of her head and how upset she suddenly seems to be with herself. “Sorry, sorry, never mind.”

Maybe it’s stupid, but for some reason that’s when Robin realizes that Stevie was about to say something mean. That Stevie stopped herself but she is, Robin supposes, frustrated that the instinct is still there. And it’s not like Robin doesn’t remember that they’ve talked about this before. Stevie with that eyepatch on from where they reattached her retina and Robin laying in the hospital bed next to her still under doctor’s supervision. Neither one of them were high anymore, it had been almost sixteen hours since Everything, they were only in the hospital at all because Robin’s mom had found them both passed out in her bed and panicked. When Mrs. Henderson had seen them both in Hawkins General and did what Stevie said was panicking and had them shipped to the city, her car speeding closely behind.

The only thing they could possibly be high on was the sudden crushing awareness of their own mortality, when Stevie’s one good eye locked with hers and she said, “I don’t want the first thing people think of when they remember me to be how I was a douche or an asshole. Or a bitch, I guess, if they actually let me change like they said they would.

“All the girls I know,” she paused and seemed to consider that, “all the girls that I still like, are good and kind and badass.”

“Including me?” Robin had teased, but she had remembered the way she had given Stevie such a hard time from the second they started working together until the moment they as the ‘adults’ realized they were going to have to protect Dustin and Erica from something that might kill them all.

“Especially you.”

So yeah, of course, when she catches herself about to verbally eviscerate Keith behind his back two weeks after being back in town she shuts down. But Robin isn’t about to let that happen. Stevie is good and kind and definitely a badass, if Keith were in trouble she would absolutely risk her life to save him -- as long as saving him didn’t keep her from saving one of the kids. 

Stevie was a good person who had some mean girl tendencies, Robin wasn’t going to make her feel bad about that. As long as she was using her powers for good, or like Claire in the Breakfast Club she was kind of Mean Girl lite.

“He’s kind of a slimy creep,” Robin admits. The kind of comment she thinks, but couldn’t ever really say with her last group of friends. It would break the loser code.

Stevie’s shoulders drop from around her ears. She’s still idly picking at the nail polish they just painted on her thumb, but she smiles over at Robin. A little sly, a little catty. “He touched my shoulder while we were leaving and I swear to god he left orange cheese puff residue behind.”

“Maybe half of your new clothes shouldn’t be dry clean only.”

“ Maybe he should help cover my dry cleaning bill if he’s going to put his hands on me in the workplace. I could call Family Video HR, probably. You know his dad owns like half of this strip mall, and people gave me shit about having money, I’m pretty sure they own the dry cleaning place too.”

“So why do these polyester nightmares smell like the BO of employees past?”

“That’s what I’m saying!”

With the job and Stevie back, Robin almost forgets that she spent the first three weeks of school sad and miserable. She’s maybe even a little distracted that they have plans tonight, and forgets that there are reasons other than the threat of bacterial infection to avoid the girl’s room in the language hallway. And more than any of that, it’s really hard to think about any of that when she can feel her bladder starting to pickle her brain.

The door to the bathroom swings open before she can exit the stall. Voices she recognizes as Patty Taylor and Molly Smith already mid-conversation filter in. “I mean she’s pretty, like really pretty, but I mean why would you even move to Hawkins.”

It’s definitely too late to leave.

“Carol said that she heard from Heather that she moved in with her aunt, she was from the city or something.”

The squelching sound of a lipgloss wand leaving the tube is punctuated by a bitchy hum, “Well, you know who spent all that time in the city this summer.”

“I mean yeah, but how would they have even met? I’ve heard like six different stories about why she was there.”

Patty’s voice echoes, through the crack in the stall door Robin can see her lean over top of the sink putting her face even closer to the water spotted mirror above it. “Well she was in that mall fire, but I heard she had to stay so long after initial treatment because she…”

There must be some facial expression she’s missing, Patty trails off like she’s dropped some grand secret. Robin isn’t a total loser, she hears gossip. She knows that Mrs. Click is going through a bitter divorce from her husband because he had that affair with the gas station attendant from the Chevron by the highway. She knows that Tim Morris got sent to military school after he put a cherry bomb in Mrs. O’Leary’s mailbox. She knows that Vickie is definitely a shoo-in for clarinet first chair even though Michael Lewis had it last year and he’s a senior this year.

And yeah okay two of those she had heard from Stevie.

But she thinks she should have had some clue that there was some kind of rumor going around about her. Molly wrinkles her forehead, maybe she isn’t the only one who has no clue about this rumor. “Because she what?”

“Because she lost the baby and they put her in the psych ward,” Patty says loud enough that it bounces off the tile walls of the bathroom. A hand covers her mouth and they both look around like they’ve just remembered that they’re in public. Robin pulls her feet up on the toilet seat with her.

“What baby?” Molly asks in a whisper that seems even louder with the way she forces it out.

“Come on, everyone knows the reason she was so upset that Steve died. He knocked her up while they were working together and with the stress she lost the baby. She was such a freak already, the new girl and her must have been in the same padded cell in the loony bin.”

“Really? I mean with Steve Harrington? ”

“I mean Carol said it so I’m pretty sure it has to be true, you know how close she used to be with Steve.” 

The bell rings, sending them both fleeing from the bathroom with muttered curses. Robin stays in the stall too stunned by what she’s heard to move. Stunned and filled with the thought that all she wants right now is to see Stevie.

She bumps into Eddie Munson on the way to the payphone. He gives her an unreadable look, mostly eyebrows that she can’t see beneath his bangs anyway, so she isn’t sure why he even bothers. Is he wondering why she’s skipping class? Or did he see her running from the bathroom and now he’s wondering if maybe the rumors were only partially true, that she’s still pregnant and she hadn’t lost the baby like apparently half the school thinks.

If a wet rat like Munson knows more about her status in the school than she does she really might have to go back and hurl.

She puts in her change and dials the increasingly familiar number for the Henderson place.

“Hen-”

“I need you to come pick me up, now.”

It isn’t hard to convince the school nurse, who’s more worried about when she can slip away to sneak her next cigarette than she is about doing any nursing, that she’s too sick to stay. So she’s waiting out front when Stevie’s new Jeep rockets into the parking lot, the woman of the hour flinging herself out of it before it’s fully in park. 

“What happened? What’s wrong? The kids are fine right?” She’s pressing the back of her hand to Robin’s forehead, the other at her side clenching into fists as she looks over Robin’s head for any creature or person that might need to be put down.

“Everything’s fine,” she lies, “I needed to see you.”

A single eyebrow raises, Robin helped her pluck that eyebrow into that arch and now it’s being used in disbelief at her own blatant lie. “Fine,” she relents, “I’ll tell you when we aren’t standing in the middle of the parking lot, okay?”

The radio is off but so are the doors, so even as Robin refuses to talk the sound of the wind rushing past them fills the silence of the car. With no destination in mind, Stevie seems to be driving a slow meandering circuit of Hawkins.

“I overheard Patty and Molly talking about us in the bathroom today.” She says only after they’ve passed Melvalds twice with no sign of parking.

“They were talking in the bathroom about us or they were talking about us in the bathroom.”

“That’s the same sentence twice.”

“No it’s not. In the bathroom or in the bathroom.” The emphasis is nonsensical, but after a second it clicks.

“They were in the bathroom. I guess I was also in the bathroom but it was definitely not about our bathroom conversation.”

“What were they saying?” Stevie noses out gossip like a search dog noses out missing kids.

Robin sticks her hand out the side of the car, dancing it up and down in the wind like a wave. Letting the force of it glide up and over her like she wishes she could just get over whatever it is that has her so upset. Gossip and rumor that she knows isn’t true.

“Technically you got to be two characters. They think we know each other from the psych ward because boy you got me pregnant and when you died I lost the baby and went crazy.”

Her seatbelt catches her hard against the chest, forcing the air out of her lungs. Stevie’s hit the brakes so hard that the smell of rubber is in the air, uncaring that they’re in the middle of a main road. She’s just looking at Robin with something, disbelief or outrage, maybe a little bit of that rage she gets when her people have been hurt.

“Patty said that? Patty Taylor? Patty with the retainer breath whose lipgloss makes it look like she’s always drooling on herself, Patty?”

A nod is enough answer for Stevie to let out a little humph, setting her eyes back to the road and easing them into drive like they’d just been caught by a stray redlight.

“What?” 

She shakes her head, gazing around the upcoming turn like they don’t both know it’ll be the rundown place that used to be Benny’s. It’s going to be something mean, something she’s worried will make her sound too much like the person she used to be.

As far as Robin is concerned whatever it is won’t be any different than when she swung that phone at that Russian guard. Or crashed that car into Billy’s. It’s all just different ways of helping to protect the people she loves that aren’t as good at protecting themselves.

“Tell me,” she insists, wheedles even. “Whatever it is I won’t tell anyone else. It’s time honored girl code you have to tell me.”

“Girl code?”

“I’ll mimeo you a copy of the handbook, tell me. It’ll make me feel better.”

Stevie’s sigh is audible over the wind rushing past them, her side eye not bad enough that Robin is at all worried about it. “I just think it’s funny that she’s passing judgment on you and your possible pregnancy when everyone knows she’s banned from the U of I campus because she went streaking to impress a guy that wasn’t even interested in her. The only reason she doesn’t have an arrest record for it is because her dad is a former professor or donor or something and threatened funding if the Dean pressed charges.”

“Oh my god, really?”

“Totally, the guy was on the basketball team. He came back and told everyone when he came home for the pre-season kegger.”

She grabs Stevie’s hand off the gearshift, holds it just because she can. Relishes in the closeness the two of them can have now that she’s back and everything is better again. “You are the strongest woman I know, all this knowledge and you just keep it to yourself all the time.”

She snorts, squeezing Robin’s hand, “I literally don’t, I just told you something. Pretty sure that’s like if I had the nuclear launch codes or something and I gave them out to just one person because they’re having a really bad day.”

“Oh! Do you remember doing those stupid duck and cover drills in elementary school?”

“Oh that's really nice of you, Mrs. Buckley, but Aunt Claudia is expecting me home for dinner.” Stevie's voice calls from outside the door, only a surprise because they didn't have plans to hang out today.

She scrambles from her bed, the wire on her headphones tangling around her neck until the weight of her walkman drags them off her. Flinging the door open she's just in time to save her best friend. “Thanks for bringing her up, Mom, we’re just gonna hang out in my room til Steph has to leave, okay?”

Shoving Stevie toward the bed before her Mom has a chance to say anything else, Robin at least smiles before she shuts the door in her mother’s face.

“What happened?”

Stevie is digging through her jewelry box, has a ring Robin picked up at a garage sale because it looked cool and didn’t think about trying on, and doesn’t bother looking ashamed at being caught snooping. “Why does something have to be wrong?”

She slips the ring on her finger, the gold band and mossy green stone looks better on her than it would have Robin. “You can keep it if you admit something happened.” Stevie starts to raise an eyebrow, but it halts half way up her forehead when Robin gives the Family Video vest she’s still wearing a tug.

Her smile goes lopsided, tilts too high on one side before she wanders over to flop down on the bed. “I, maybe, did something stupid.”

Flopping down beside her, Robin swears when she lands on her walkman first. “Stupid like when you put Re-Animator in the romance section or stupid like when you tripped into the Back to the Future cutout and apologized cause you weren't wearing your glasses.”

“Stupid like I don't know, Rob, you know how at first I was pretending that I didn't know anyone when they came in right, cause I'm supposed to be new in town.”

“Like bad witness protection because they put you right back where you left.”

“Right, well I kinda forgot to do that this morning when I was working by myself?”

Looking now she can tell this is something that has had Stevie really worked up. The strands of hair at the front of her face have lost some of their beachy wave from where she's been fussing with it, pushing it back, tugging at it. Waiting for when she saw Robin again.

Sitting up from the bed, she grabs Stevie's hand in a too tight grip. “What happened? You're okay right? They didn't recognize you and do anything shitty, right?”

“Well that's the thing,” she somehow looks even more distressed, it gives Robin another clue. Stevie is afraid she's broken some unspoken rule of girlhood by doing whatever it is she's done. Which means the story will be interesting.

“So Roger came in, you know Roger right? Second stringer on the basketball team, his footwork was too slow to ever actually be any good on the court but he had an amazing three pointer as long as no one was ever anywhere near him. So he'd make a great professional HORSE player but not really going anywhere with the actual game. He came in with his girlfriend-”

“Mindy Peterson.”

“Right, and when did they even get together?” She shakes her head. “Not the point, I was flipping through the Tiger Beat that Cindy left in the drawer after her shift, cause this months Car and Driver was a total waste of money. And he wanders up, surprising me cause the bell over the door still doesn't work and I thought I was alone in there. He starts talking to me like he already knows me.”

“He was flirting with you in front of his girlfriend!”

“That wasn't flirting, he was just being friendly; and I didn't know Mindy was there, she was back in the romance section picking something out.”

“So he's flirting with you while his girlfriend is picking out something for date night.”

Stevie rolls her eyes, shoving not so gently at Robin's shoulder. “He was talking to me like he already knew me, and I do know him so I did the same. I mentioned the last game he played in, well we played in. And then he starts looking at me and I realized what I look like.”

She gestures down at herself, and Robin isn't sure if this is a compliment time or a diffuse the situation time. Stevie really doesn't look that much like she used to. Her face has softened, her hair is longer, and she's leaned into the blonde highlights that she had in the summer.

“He's all ‘Do I know you?’” She continues, and Robin laughs, it's crazy how deep she can still get her voice and even though Roger does not have anything approaching the bass that Stevie has given him. It makes the situation feel even more bizarre. “it's not like I can say, ‘What you don't recognize me from all the times I gave you advice on how to keep yourself open on offense so you could actually get a hand on the ball?’”

Robin reaches for the nail polish on her bedside table, the robin's egg blue Stevie has taken to and the taupe brown that she likes but doesn't clash with Stevie's. They both pick at their nails when they get nervous, and Stevie has definitely been nervous.

“You could have said that,” she says just to be contrary, Stevie hand held in hers it means Robin avoids the smack that would have come.

She puts blue on every finger but one, letting Stevie think as she caps the polish and grabs the taupe to finish the hand. “Hi remember me, I faked my death so I could get boobies without getting murdered in the pumpkin patch I already avoided almost dying in once. Did you know they give you a new social security number for that?”

“So what did you actually do?”

“I lied, obviously.” She blinks twice, opens her eyes wider so she looks doe-eyed and vacant. “Oh gosh, well I guess you wouldn’t remember me. I used to only come to Hawkins during the holidays to babysit my little cousin, and I always try to catch a basketball game when I’m in town. Sometimes I’d sneak out and go to the parties, but I’m shy so...”

“Oh my god, like you’ve ever been shy in your life.”

“I’m going to have to be now!” She throws her hands up, fingers spread wide to avoid accidentally smudging her fresh nails. “It’s not like I can lie my way out of admitting to sharing homeroom with someone next. I’m just lucky Roger’s never took his eyes off the bottom button of my blouse.”

“Do you remember that movie I made you watch a couple months ago, the black and white one?”

“Oh yeah, that really narrows it down.”

“Gaslight, the one with the opera singer’s niece and her new husband tries to make her think she’s crazy. We just lie until everyone is convinced that it’s the truth.”

“The truth being that Stephanie Henderson always existed?”

Eye contact isn’t easy, unless it’s Stevie. They hold each other’s gaze as the excitement bubbles between them. “Exactly,” Robin says, “and that if they think anything else, they’re crazy.”

“You’re ridiculous.” She says, but it sounds like ‘you’re on.’

“Can I be a bitch for a second?” Stevie asks. She doesn’t look up from whatever magazine she was already flipping through when Robin walked through the door. It’s too casual, too calculated.

Progress has been slow but she’s slowly getting Stevie to the point where she doesn’t feel like she has to be nice all the time just because she’s a girl. Where she still acts like the bitchy dingus she'd been before, just a happier version.  

“Obviously, just let me clock in.”

When she gets back Stevie has a stack of returns that she’s working on rewinding. One thumb in her mouth as she chews at the cuticle. “So what’s-?

“If I hear one more word about Eddie the Freak, I’m going to lose it, Rob. I mean what’s he got that’s so great? I could have taken us to the All State Championships if I hadn’t gotten that last concussion saving the twerps. I’ve saved all those twerps’ lives at least two times! I was cool. I am cool! But all I get to hear these days is ‘Oh, Stevie, Eddie just did the coolest thing in the campaign today.’ ‘Thanks for the advice, Stevie, but I’m going to go with what Eddie said instead.’ ‘I know it’s your only day off, Stevie, but could you pick us up late after school? There's Hellfire today.’ ‘Stevie, since Keith actually likes you could you hold Ladyhawke for us. Oh, no we’re going to do a movie night with Eddie.’”

She’s panting slightly when she’s finished, like she’s been holding this in for weeks. With all the quotes she’s racked up she probably has been.

“You know he kicked my tray off the lunch table last week,” she encourages. She snags a box of Sour Patch Kids from the candy counter. Popping one in her mouth before waving the bag under Stevie’s frowning face. She doesn’t even have a movie turned on. Well she does, but it looks like it was one of the weekend returns Stevie wasn’t going to put on Watership Down.

“Well he’s inconsiderate,” Stevie says, digging around in the box until she finds a red one and popping it into her mouth. “Everything is all fuck the man until he’s the man in question and then he’s the only one anyone should listen to about anything. Lucas is going to make the basketball team, he’s been working really hard on it with Jay and some of the other guys on the team.”

She’s basically taken the whole box of candy at this point. Robin doesn’t even care, just watches as Stevie picks out her favorite colors and lines them up on her magazine on the counter like a sweet and sour army. Completely oblivious to the quiet devastation that’s playing out on her face. Her brow furrowed and tight when she talks about Lucas, basketball another thing Robin wonders if she’s being unintentionally left out of.

“I just know Munson’s going to turn it into some us or them thing, like it isn’t possible to like more than one thing.”

“Maybe you-”

“And maybe that’s why they’ve been so cool with all of this,” she shrugs her shoulder in place of gesturing down at herself, too busy tearing apart a lone sourpatch general, “like it was a send off before they moved on to an actual guy who can actually do something for them. That’s probably a better send off than I deserve even right, like I mean, the kind of person I used to be. Maybe I don’t get more than one happy thing.”

Robin flattens the little red and green army underneath the flat of her hand, “Absolutely not. You are not going to let a… a… a dumpster raccoon with Mrs. Goble’s mystery meat on the bottom of his stupid shoes make you think that you don’t deserve the entire world.”

“But-” Stevie tears at the cardboard of the box between her fingers, leaving little pieces of it on the floor between her feet.

“But nothing, your little shithead kids might have latched onto the first giant nerd that looked at them when they crossed through the doors of the high school like freshly hatched ducklings but you’re the coolest person they’ve ever had the chance to meet and it’s their loss if they don’t notice.”

“I mean they’re in high school so-”

“So they’ve decided to get all the stupid decisions out at the start. It’s a bold decision but maybe that will keep them from-”

“From crashing their dad’s truck into half the cars at prom?”

“I wish one of them had been yours,” she steals the last red Sour Patch from between Stevie’s fingers, popping it into her mouth before her best friend can do anything about it.

“You’re never going to pass your driver’s test, I hope you like the bus.”

“You’re going to drive me to work forever because you love me,” she drags love out as she dances away from Stevie’s slapping hands, snagging a stack of tapes to return to the shelves as she goes.

There’s no way Stevie isn’t rolling her eyes, but Robin also knows that she’ll look all soft and pleased. Knows because a yellow candy smacks hard against the copy of The Breakfast Club that’s right beside her head.

“What the hell is going on with that rabbit?”

“Pretty sure it’s proof that you should never be trusted to pick the shift movie.”

“Stevie’s being a total headcase this week, will you tell her to chill out,” Henderson delivers what Robin is going to generously call a request after cornering her between fourth and fifth periods. Cause if it isn’t a request then it’s an order or a demand, and her small friend is not going to be happy with what she has to say in that case.

“Well that depends, Dusty, why are you calling my best friend a headcase?”

He rolls his eyes at her, a trait that Stevie might put up with but Robin is not about to. “Because she’s being one, every time I try to talk to her it’s like…” he trails off. That’s probably for the best.

“It’s like all you can talk about is your new best friend Eddie? It’s like you aren’t interested in her now that you’ve got some new brother that you can hang out with instead? It’s like all she’s good for is a ride to see the boys? It’s like you can’t ask her how to talk to girls anymore or how you should do your hair because she’s not the same anymore.”

“I didn’t say that,” he shrieks, hands waving between them like he can swipe away the thousand bees that are her accusations. She feels stinging mad actually now that she’s started putting words out there for the things that she’s feeling.

“You don’t have to say it, it’s what you’ve been doing.”

“Did she say that?” Robin gently swings her locker door just shy of closed. Dustin looks younger than she thinks she’s seen him since the first time they met. Looks smaller than she’s seen him in her life. Looking up at her with big watery eyes, waiting for her to make it okay.

Stevie’s gonna be pissed if she doesn’t at least try to make it okay.

She picks each word carefully, not wanting him to feel completely off the hook, “She didn’t say it exactly like that.”

Dustin looks at the floor, his hat obscuring his face enough that she can’t tell if he’s followed through on the watery eyes to full crying. The ambiguity makes him easier to talk to for a second, now that she doesn’t have to worry about watching what his expression is doing.

“She’s still the same person who walked down the train tracks with a kid she barely knew looking for his runaway science experiment. She’s still the person who did your hair for the snowball. She’s the person who went hunting for Russian spies with you. She’s the person that would like to keep giving you terrible advice on how to date.”

His next breath is phlegmy and ragged. “It wasn’t terrible advice.”

“Right, right, your Moonchild Empress or whatever.”

Dustin hasn’t been quiet once in the entire time that she’s known him so Robin assumes the quiet means he’s done talking. Swinging her locker back open she goes back to what she was doing before he interrupted, which had, coincidentally been Stevie related. Deciding whether or not she was going to bring her copy Watership Down to work with her so Stevie could see what was up with the rabbits.

“They should meet.”

Robin had also been leaning toward introducing her to Fiver and Hazel, but she doesn't think that’s what Dustin means.

“Who should-”

“Stevie and Eddie,” he looks at her with a wide grin. An expression she recognizes from shortly before she found herself in an elevator to hell. Dustin thinks he's just had a good idea. “Stevie can see that Eddie's super cool, Eddie will stop- And once they know each other we can hang out all the time, why didn't I think of this before!”

It does occur to her that she could remind Dustin that Stevie existed before July of 1985. That she went to school here and definitely already knows Eddie, that's where half the problem comes from even. But then she thinks of how much fun their next sleepover will be, when Stevie has brand new things to hate and make fun of.

“Maybe you're right Dustin, maybe that is the problem.”

He pumps his fist in time with the warning bell. “This is going to be great, I can't believe I didn't already think of this.”

He's still talking to himself as he starts to scamper off to a class he's going to be late to. But she isn’t about to let him leave without making sure he took away the real lesson he was supposed to. “And pass along to your little friends that her new meds didn't lobotomize her brain or amputate her legs. She can still tell you how to talk to girls, she can still shoot a free throw, she can still show you how to change a tire after it's blown out on the interstate.”

Dustin's staying with the Wheelers, Claudia has the night shift which means she and Stevie have the whole house to themselves.

Robin is making herself at home in Stevie's room, moving extra quilts and pillows from the linen closet into a fort she's making on the floor. Because today is going to be the best bitch day in the world, once Stevie makes it home from playing chauffeur. Because today Stevie gave in and went to lunch and a movie with Dustin and his new best friend Eddie.

She keeps trying to imagine what Stevie will say. Maybe Munson dips his fries in syrup or something disgusting. Maybe he showed up to the movie in his nerd brigade shirt. Maybe he showed up thirty minutes late! And the Stevie in her head has devastating things to say about all of those things, but she knows none of them are right. She just can't manage the right amount of even toned bitchery that Stevie can, the clever double entendre that makes the person she's insulting look all the dumber for getting upset at the blatant quips.

“Did you really bike here, you weirdo? You know I would have picked you up.” Stevie's voice carries down the hallway, accented by the sound of her keys hitting the bowl by the door and her shoes getting picked up from the floor and set down in the shoe tree.

“You got that bike rack for the Jeep. I wanted to make sure it actually got some use.”

The answering laugh is the one Robin possessively thinks of as hers, a little ugly, high pitched and snorting. It makes it to the bedroom just a second before Stevies face. A face that's wearing the lipgloss with the glitter in it, the one she saves for when she's trying to impress someone or make them look at her mouth.

“You look nice?”

“Such a charmer, Rob, no wonder you've got so many girls banging down your door.” She eases herself down onto the floor beside Robin, smoothing out a buttery yellow skirt that has to be new. She knows every single item in Stevie's closet, except this skirt.

She isn't going to think about how Stevie went out shopping without her though. She'd rather focus her attention somewhere more entertaining. “How was lunch?”

Stevie fusses with the edge of her skirt, rolling the hem of it between two fingers. Her face pinking though under that she's smiling. “Ugh you wouldn't even believe Henderson was a twerp, as usual. Insisted that he had to have one side of the table to himself, ordered two milkshake flavors so he could mix them together, and of course I'm paying for the whole thing.”

“Dustin being a dweeb is old news, what else happened at lunch.”

“I mean,” she trails off, making a face Robin has never seen before. Which shouldn't be possible, she thinks she is supposed to have seen all of Stevie's faces.  “Munson was a total freak, obviously. Kept calling me ‘My Lady’ and all that nerd shit. You’d think I came in with a cast with the way he opened every door and kept pulling out my chair.” 

It all sounds decidedly unfreakish to Robin, in fact it sounds like Stevie finds the guy charming. She realizes with something close to horror that she does actually recognize the expression on Stevie’s face. Just not on her best friend. It’s the bashful, twitterpated expression of a girl at a sleepover trying not to admit she has a crush. An expression that might as well be a death knell, cause the only time she’s ever seen it is right before date night started beating girl’s night.

“Not that it matters, the guy doesn’t know how to take a joke,” Stevie goes on, her smile still too shy to fully bloom but no less in place. Even as she pretends that whatever this is is supposed to be some dealbreaker. “I asked him what he gets out of playing Halflings and Half-wits with the dweeb squad and I thought he was going to climb on the table right there. Ed-weird went on for like five minutes on how the gremlins are some of the best players he’s ever played with, and they're an endless fount of creativity that keeps him perpetually on his toes.”

Stevie never actually stood a chance. And if Robin had been paying attention she would have realized that. 

There wasn’t anyone who loved passionate, nerdy people as much as Stevie.

Eddie Munson wore his king of the loud mouthed nerds crown with pride. And he was as obsessed with the gremlins as Stevie was 

“Why are we talking about him?” She flops over until her head is in Robin’s lap, flopping one arm outside of the pillow fortress to reach under the bed. She crows, victorious, holding a jar that's pond scum brown like it’s treasure. “Had to hide this after Dust put it in his hair. Put this goop on your face and tell me about what Vickie said in band yesterday again. Cause I'm pretty sure she was dating Dan Summers last year, and he didn't really seem like the type of guy to stay with his high school girlfriend.”

It's coincidence, pure and simple, that puts her right outside O'Donnell's fourth period class. Thompson's study hall, her own fourth period, was technically across the building but everyone knew Mr. Thompson came to work on Mondays too hungover to care about attendance.

And study hall didn't have a certain wannabe friend-dater standing outside it, debating whether or not he was going to go inside.

She is still figuring out her angle of attack when it looks like he's decided he is actually going to class. Considering O’Donnell is the type to write office referral slips to kids who aren’t meant to be in her room for ‘being a distraction’ there isn’t really any time for subtlety. Still, she’s surprised by the tone of her own voice when she shouts, “Munson!”

Heads turn in the hallway, of course they do. Faces she only knows by virtue of twelve years of school watching on with a lust for future violence she recognizes from that concrete bunker. But if Munson is concerned that a girl he's never spoken to is yelling at him, he doesn't look it as he turns on both heels to face her.

He smiles first, benignly pleasant. But Stevie taught her that trick, smiling to diffuse anger or hide how she has no idea how the person talking to her actually knows her. Munson is doing both, they had two classes together last semester and she was in the orchestra for the last school musical.

The blankness eventually clears from his eyes, “Bye Bye Buckley!”

Not about to be distracted by the dumbest reference she's ever heard, and with the eyes of at least two people she can see on her, she drags Munson away from class. It's bound to be all around the school by the dismissal bell, but rumor is less important than the mission.

The girls room by the library is always abandoned. The mirrors are dingy or cracked and it always smells like cat piss for no discernable reason. “To what do I owe this pleasure?” He looks around the bathroom with an inquisitive eye like the grimy bluish tile is somehow more interesting than her. “I'm not actually carrying if you were-”

He doesn't have the decency to stumble when she shoves at his chest, trying to push him back into the stall doors.

“What are your intentions with Stevie?”

“Ah yes, the mysterious cousin Henderson. Who says I have intentions?” His only saving grace is that it takes her too long to get her thoughts in order. A miasma of rants at the tip of her tongue about Stevie and how she was too good for him and any thoughts he might be having about her. 

But in the time it takes to see through her friend based rage, she’s able to watch a transformation take place on Eddie’s face. The smug aloofness that had taken over his face from the moment she cornered him in the hallway washes away. Leaving behind something giddy and young, bright eyes and a flushed face. “Unless she was asking about me. You two are bosom friends, are you not Diana? That would make me Gilbert Blythe, hell of a role.”

“I’m sure there are plenty of people who wish they could break a slate over your head.”

“You’re probably right, doesn’t answer my question though. Was your dear Anne Shirley talking about me?” He scuffs a boot against the floor. Doing an impressive impression of a bashful school boy while standing in front of her in his ratted out, heavy metal glory. There are at least four chains that she can spot on his outfit right now but his face would be just as at home on Opie Taylor.

But she isn’t going to get fooled by some routine. She has something to say and she’s going to make sure she says it.

“She’s really special, Munson. She’s not some cheerleader you fuck in the woods because she wants to get back at her parents that are divorcing and you’re the scariest thing available that isn’t actually dangerous.”

“Tell me how you really feel, Buckley.” The retort seems to drag itself from his mouth on instinct. Cause the aw shucks routine he’d been giving is lying broken on the floor replaced by open mouthed shock.

“I am.” The bell rings, marking them both officially late for class. She glares him down, waiting to see if he’ll leave, effectively flinching first. He glares back. “She’s an athlete, likes sports.”

Maybe it’s wrong to list the things about Stevie that she knows Munson won’t like. But she also isn’t about to let her best friend water herself down for some stupid boy.

“Wayne will be thrilled to have someone who understands what he’s talking about. Go team.”

“She hates fantasy. Dustin loaned her his copy of Fellowship of the Ring and she gave it back when they kept singing.”

“I’m sure she’d like it if I sang them for her.”

“She isn’t going to become some demure, church mouse just because you’re around. She’s snarky and confident and, and…”

He sets a hand on her shoulder in a way that is so patronizing she wishes she were as good at being a bitch as Stevie was. But she suppresses her first instinct to bite him if only because she’s working at keeping up her record of 4578 days without biting a classmate.

“I don’t know what any of that means,” he says, “but it sounds like you and your hot best friend have been talking about me. So thanks for that intel, Bucks.”

People wearing leather and motorcycle boots shouldn’t be able to skip. The stupid hanky in his stupid pocket flaps behind him like a wagging tail as Munson leaves her in the girls room with the smell of ammonia.

Stevie has Breakfast at Tiffany’s playing on the TV when Robin makes it to work. Keith let them have most of their shifts together but drew the line at letting Stevie shut the store down to come pick her up after school. So on days where Stevie works a double, she’s stuck arriving to work sweaty and guessing at whatever movie will have ended up on the big TV.

And today she gets to catch Stevie standing in the middle of the floor, a stack of tapes in her arms, while she watches the party happening in Holly Golightly’s apartment. Audrey Hepburn swaying with her guest in the middle of the floor.

“Someone’s in a mood.” 

From over her shoulder, Stevie sends Robin a look. Something loaded with dry humor and a smugness that usually means something juicy happened in the time before Robin got there.

Usually.

There’s something about the look today that feels personally directed at her.

“Well it was this or Some Like it Hot, and the stay at home moms are weird about black and white movies that aren’t the first few minutes of Wizard of Oz.”

“That’s sepia.”

“Bless you.”

Making sure Stevie can see her rolling her eyes, she heads to the back to clock in. By the time she makes it back, Stevie has the volume turned down on Holly Golightly’s romantic disasters. She’s back behind the counter, head pillowed in her hands and Robin remembers why people used to be a little scared of her popular kid cabaret. Walking up the center aisle, she feels like she’s headed straight toward a tiger with its mouth open and she’s about to put her head in there. 

“So you’ll never believe what happened earlier,” Stevie taps her nail against her cheek.

“Paul Collins came in with his mistress to look at porn again?”

Humming, Stevie doesn’t say anything as Robin comes behind the counter with her. There’s a stack of tapes that need to be rewound and a roll of Be Kind Rewind stickers that need to be stuck to cases.

“Still time for that,” she says right as Robin started to think they were going to drop it. “Sally Tyler called from the payphone.”

“Sally from the basketball team?”

“Yeah,” that smile is even wider. This is almost certainly payback for the You Suck board. “I’m thinking about joining her rec team but we’ve played one-on-one in the park once or twice.”

“And she had a Family Video emergency that only you could solve?”

“Sorta. She was just really concerned, she’d heard a rumor that my best friend was dragging the guy she saw me having lunch with this weekend into the girls room.”

This is definitely payback for the You Suck board. Stevie’s looking a little too pleased with herself as she smiles at what can only be Robin’s slack jawed surprise.

“I get if you're mad,” she says and that’s all she can assume is happening, she isn’t sure how else to read what’s happening on Stevie’s face. “But-”

“Thank you.”

“I was just trying to- What?”

“Come on,” she rolls her eyes, swipes a half hearted smack to Robin’s shoulder. “I’ve been on the other side of that, you know. Well meaning friends pulling me aside to ask what my intentions are.”

“Oh my god, did she follow us in there?”

Delight makes Stevie’s eyes sparkle, “Did you actually? I love you. Did you give him hell?”

“I think he got the upperhand.”

“I think it’s all the playing pretend. The shitheads will run circles around the unprepared too.”

It seems a little too good to be true. “You really aren’t mad?”

Someone abandoned The Breakfast Club at the scene where Ally Sheedy gets the makeover. It had seemed like a stupid scene when she’d seen it in theaters, now it makes something weird pit in the bottom of her stomach. She doesn’t get the chance to hit rewind, to send Allison back in time so she can be strange and herself again, because Stevie is flipping her around and pulling her into a bone crushing hug.

“First of all,” she says into the side of Robin’s hair, “the only thing I’m even a little miffed about is you thinking I couldn’t kick Munson’s ass myself. But no one’s ever done anything like that for me before so I’m cool with letting it slide.”

“But we are acknowledging that you definitely have a thing for the guy with the rattiest hair in the school. Probably even Roane county.” Robin says, face pressed into the meat of Stevie’s shoulder.

Stevie shoves her away with a groan that Robin’s laughter is already drowning out. “Yeah, alright. He’s kind of okay I guess.”

“Such sweet words for the father of your brood.”

“He’s not the father of my anything,” she flips her hair over one shoulder, “anyway I think he gets off on it so I’m gonna keep being mean to him.”

“That was more than I wanted to know about either of you.”

“No it wasn’t, you like that I’m mean too. You get all sad faced when you think I’m trying to bury my impulses.”

For the second time today Robin is left too surprised to say anything. She’s left gaping, not that Stevie is looking at her now; too busy picking at the nail polish left on her pinky. 

“I like it,” she says quietly after a moment. Robin has shut her mouth by the time Stevie looks up at her again, something soft but serious on her face. She reaches across the counter to grab Robin by the hand, melding what’s left of their coordinating manicures by linking their fingers. “You’re my number one. Even if Eddie does anything about anything, he’s going to have to compete with you.”

Neither of them move as the weight of the moment surrounds them like one of Mrs. Henderson’s quilts. Heavy and homey and right. But they are still at work and as the bell beside the door dings, and they break their silence to greet their new customer in tandem, they shrug off the heavy sincerity for something more functional. Stevie’s smile turns sly, and she tugs Robin closer while keeping an eye on the man now browsing the comedies. “You’ll never guess who came in earlier to ask if we had Nine and a Half Weeks yet.”

[hippielittlemetalhead]

Never Took The Time (To Forget) part 4.2: Robin's Boy

A.N: Life is kinda sucky right now with job hunting, surviving at my current job, the strains that come with being a caregiver to a family member while maintaining a long distance relationship and just dealing with mental and emotional self-care. So here's this, super late and not beta-read but at least I wrote it.

As always, feel free to yell at/with me in the comments, tags and/or ask box.

Part 1 (Hop fucks up), Part 2 (Pride and Prejudices: Joyce's Edition), Part 3 (One of Us), Part 4.1 (With a Capital 'P'), Part 5 (Man Of The Hour)

There's not much that surprises Robin Buckley these days. She gets queasy at the sight of ground beef, the big friendly dogs a few doors down at the O'Reilly place make her blood run cold, she can't watch the old Russian movies her dad loves without having nightmares after and she's sleeping with a nightlight for the first time since she was six. But it takes a lot to surprise her.

Seeing the declared dead Chief of Police step out of a sleek black, obviously-secret-government-bullshit car flanked by an agent she recognizes as one of Owens' lackeys from last July when they were making the rounds with Government funded medical care contingent on signing sketchy NDAs? Just par for the course at this point.

Steve's face when Eleven-Jane rushes into the not-dead Chief's arms and it turns into a whole 'Moment'? Said Chief's look of barely interested confusion followed by tired annoyance when Steve drags her in front of him, rambling about Starcourt and new additions to The Party and finally getting to meet 'My Hop'? Yeah, none of that surprises her either. She plays along for Steve, doesn't give Hopper any time to say anything that would take that happy smile off his face or get rid of the way he's practically glowing he's smiling bigger than she's ever seen directed at anyone other than the kids. Tries not to think about the way it makes something in her clench and crouch like a cat getting ready to pounce and bare fangs she didn't realize she had outside of a life and death situation. She introduces herself, maintains eye contact and drags Steve off as fast as she can to do something, anything, that will distract him from trying to catch up like the Byers clan is with the kids and assembled assorted monster fighters.

She's not surprised when she can't stop Steve from stepping up every time Hopper or Joyce or anyone with a badge says they need anything despite his own still healing wounds. She's not surprised when Hop takes it a step too far.

They're at the Hopper Cabin that is steadily becoming the Hopper-Byers Cottage when Hop tells his and Joyce's shared custody bald parasite that Steve is little more than an annoyance he puts up with for the free babysitting service and manual labor and cause he can go up against shit that would give anyone else nightmares while keeping the kids safe and mostly in-check. She's sitting with Eleven-Jane, sewing patches onto one of Hop's old army jackets, (the kid had seen Eddie's battle vest in Steve's car and it had reminded her of her sister Kali and she'd decided she wanted one of her own for the war ahead and then all of the other rugrats had decided they did too so she and Argyle had taken to giving sporadic sewing lessons whenever the kids had the materials to start their own battle attire) when Steve comes round the corner to the back of the property striding with purpose she rarely saw when he was around his kids.

She leaves her unfinished project on the stump she'd been using as a stool and chases after him. She shooes off curious and worried kids, promising to stick with him, keep the walkie close and on, make sure he was safe and didn't run afoul of any demo-beasts or trigger-happy government goons as he made his way to his car and then wherever else he was marching his happy ass.

She hates the fact that when they're both finally back at the little apartment that Owens' yes-men had acquired for Steve when Harrington Sr. decided to be an opportunist prick and kick Steve out for 'not taking care of the house' in the middle of the 'earthquake', that Steve hasn't shed a single tear. She hates that she's not surprised.

He doesn't say anything as he kicks off his Nikes and shuffles over to the 'second-hand' couch they'd gotten from Mrs. Henderson (Steve and Robin were both fully aware she'd just gotten it shortly before Spring break and was in no way in need of a new one so soon, but they both also knew better than to call her out on her kindness). He doesn't look up at her from his spot curled in amongst the throw pillows and blankets they'd been gifted by parents of various members of the party after Hopper and Owens' story that the two of them had saved the kids again from some freak incident like last year with Starcourt. She pulls out the thick quilt they had found in the latest donations bins when Hawkin's government supervised relief force started outsourcing for supplies and basic comforts. He stares at the wall where they'd hung an oversized corkboard dedicated to polaroids and photo booth strips and even some properly printed pictures of the little monster fighting family they'd put together.

She can't pull him out of this, no matter how much she may want to. There's some places his mind goes only Eleven-Jane would be able to reach and neither of them were going to put more on that girl's plate. So she puts on a Bruce Springsteen record she used to hate and curls up as close as she can to him through the quilt and pillows. Every now and then she gets up to get them both water, to grab some crackers to try and coax him into eating and to switch over to a new record or just flip the one on the player but she always comes back to her spot next to her Steve.

"Whatever he said to you, you know it's not true. Right? You're worth more than a dozen undead cops on a power trip." That gets an amused huff.

"Seriously Stevie, the kids adore you, I swear all the moms in Hawkins think you're the best thing since sliced bread and I don't know what I'd do without my personal chump. We're soulmates, remember? One of these days we're gonna mind meld like Spock and McCoy and we'll be unstoppable. I can't make it without my McCoy, Bones."

"I can't make it without you either, you hobgoblin. Thanks Bobby."

The next day is better. Steve is still a little quiet, a little droopy. But he's present and there's a simmering anger underneath his smile that Robin is proud to see him acknowledging but makes her worry about him as he ushers her into his car to drop her off on her rare lone shift at Family Video before he heads out to a quick 'consultation patrol' with some military special operatives to check out something weird by one of the new cracks.

No one had told any of the kids yet, about the cracks starting to spread out in smaller fissures like a slowly spreading infection. Hadn't thought it necessary with Steve and Nancy (both now legal adults and wasn't the government taking full advantage of that) there as a first line of communication while Joyce wrangled a restless Hop as he settles back in and heals and spars with Owens over payouts and government aide for the town and what the growing military presence was and wasn't allowed to do. With the parents occupied the kids had come together tighter than ever, focusing on their injured and recovering from the nightmare fuel that was their spring break. No one noticed.

She can't help the rant she falls into as they drive through checkpoints and past regular civilians being escorted through areas a little too close to a Gate for comfort. She goes on about how half of the soldiers act like Steve is just one of them and the other half treat him with the same cautious curiosity they do Eleven-Jane whenever she makes her way to the 'front lines' these days. She wants to get the weird boy-speak head nods too! Even Nancy gets them, especially when she's walking around with her sawed-off strapped to a jerry-rigged hip-holster. Robin has used Darlin' before, she's speed poured Molotov Cocktails to hand to soldier boys trying not to piss their pants as Steve and Nancy barked orders as they tried to down a demogorgon fresh from the Upside-Down. Where's her battlefield camaraderie?

It makes him laugh and shake his head fondly as he calls her crazy and weird with that soft smile on his face that makes her chest feel warm and fuzzy like her parents' hugs used to when she was 10 and crawled into their bed after having a nightmare. She doesn't tell him to be careful as they turn down onto Main street or to make sure he comes back in one piece as he rolls to a stop in front of the dark storefront. She starts on another tangent about him abandoning her to the drudgery of Capitalism as he gets to frolic in the woods with a bunch of burly men with their toys before he laughingly reaches over her to open her door to start pushing her out of the car. He smiles big and dopey as she practically spills onto the asphalt, still rambling away about neglectful soulmates and abuses of driving power with smatterings of claims that she'll take over his apartment if he dies and use his ashes as fertilizer for the plants he's taken to keeping on the fire-escape outside the living room window if he dares to leave her alone to babysit his hellions.

He shoots back a final, "Love you too Bobby!" before taking off towards where he's meeting the scientists and soldiers he's supposed to lead through Upside Down infected woods. As he leaves her standing on the sidewalk he doesn't make any sort of promise to be safe, to let the government goons just do their job, to make it back to her alive or in one piece. Not even to make it back to her. She plays with the locket she's taken to wearing that holds a curled up braid of hair shades darker than hers or anyone's in her family.

She doesn't watch his car to the end of the street like she might have before Spring Break, after their Starcourt 'adventure', instead she takes a deep breath and unlocks the dumb video store in this dumb town full of dumb people who don't know when to call it quits and just get the hell out of Dodge. She boots up the computer leaving it to warm up while she starts sorting through whatever mess the new shmucks Steve insisted they hire to cover what times the two of them couldn't because of the Arcade (which they had also gone and hired more staff for now that people weren't one tremor away from rioting in the streets) and Upside Down/ government related shenanigans they ended up getting dragged into.

The bell above the door jingles and she has to bite back a groan. "Welcome to Family Video, I literally just got here so you're gonna have to give me a minute before I can help you."

"Afraid we've only got movies round here, officer. You want any other medium of entertainment I'd suggest the arcade or the distribution yard." She won't turn to face him, not sure she can keep her cool if she does right now. Her hands move on muscle memory, shuffling papers into their proper piles and flipping open VHS cases to check if they need to be rewound. "Sorry, guess we'll have to catch up another time."

"I'm uh, I'm not here for a movie." She may have only heard his voice a couple of times and in passing but she didn't call her ears little geniuses for nothing. She forces her body to relax, lowering her shoulders the way Steve taught her to and keeping her voice light like Eddie walked her through, calling on his Theatre Kid skill set to teach the Party how to convincingly lie improvise when being questioned by people who really did not need to know just what was going on in good old Hawkins.

She can hear him sigh and can't help but picture his hand running over the fuzz on his head the way Steve runs his hands through his coif more and more nowadays in a way he never did before Nancy, before he got pulled into this bullshit and Hopper was rumored to be the one signing his paperwork and taking responsibility for him when his parents didn't show up after an almost week long stay at the hospital. "Look, I know you don't like me. And it has been brought to my attention just how much I fucking earned that. But I- I need your help here. To fix it."

There's not much that surprises Robin Buckley these days. She gets queasy at the sight of ground beef and meatloaf covered in ketchup, the big friendly dogs a few doors down at the O'Reilly place she used to pet and give snacks to on her way to and from school make her blood run cold, she can't watch the old Russian movies she and her dad used to stay up late watching together without having nightmares after and she's sleeping with a nightlight by her bed for the first time since she was six. But it takes a lot to surprise her. Jim Hopper might have just done it.

She doesn't stop moving, doesn't want to give him the satisfaction of throwing her off. She fiddles with the sharp little knife she has tucked up her shirt sleeve in the little sheath she and Steve put together between shuffling papers, taps at the button on her vest hiding the mic attached to the walkie talkie that never leaves her pocket these days. When she finally turns to look at him she's not surprised by the thinness of his frame or the way his eyes and cheeks still look a little sunken in. She sees the tired father worried for his kids and his people and his town, angry at the government for their involvment and their stupidity that she had come to expect. She is not expecting the remorse, the fear, she sees looking back at her. She wonders for a moment what he sees when he looks at her, at any of the teens and kids and young adults he's fought alongside trying to stop the end of the world.

"Fine. He'll be back from his patrol-" He looks mildly confused for a moment, meaning Joyce hadn't been passing along even the minimal information Nancy and Steve had been giving her to relay to Hop and the rest of the Party. That would have to be it's own discussion at some point probably. "-in about twenty minutes. You have fifteen. Now why should I help you?"

"You care about Harringt- Steve. You're close, the two of you have been basically Siamese Twins since Starcourt from what I hear. I- I realize that I made a mistake dumb enough shitting Mike Wheeler is making more sense than me, that I fucked up in a way I don't fucking know how to fix. And I am asking. Politely. For your help."

Honestly she's not sure she believes him. Honestly he's surprised her more times in the last five minutes than most anything or anyone else has in the last year. The man has a lot to unpack and the situation with Steve is just a drop in the man's pile of shit he's managed to bury himself under but maybe there's some hope yet.

She checks the watch on her wrist (an obscenely expensive piece Steve got from one of his parents' rich friends at a holiday party he was too young to remember on a leather band that he had outgrown and never got around to replacing) and looks back at Hop. Ten more minutes. "Why are you here?"

Hop groans in that growly sort of way that makes her think of her grandpa Dale, a great bear of a man who had given the best hugs with shoulders to put Jim Hopper to shame. The no-longer-chief runs his hand over his fuzz again, one hand propped on his hip as he shifts his weight to one side and she tamps down the flicker of biting anger at another example of the ways Steve had shaped himself after a man who never gave him the respect or care he deserved.

"I don't know how to fix what I fucked up. Steve's a good kid, I can admit that now. And he didn't deserve my bullshit just cause I couldn't get past old highschool biases. I wasn't there for him like I should have been- like I told him I would be when I signed those papers. But he's not the kid I thought he was, he's nothing like his folks or the other trust fund brats who think they run this shithole town. I don't know what I'm doing. I just know that kid deserves better than I've been doing."

She hums like she's mulling over his little speech to hide the way she's freaking out a little over what to say to all that. Even she doesn't know how she and Steve got to where they are beyond being tortured by Russians for information they didn't have then being drugged out of their minds while fighting inter-dimensional flesh monsters. But she doesn't think that would help Hop much in this situation.

But she thinks she believes him. At least for now.

"Alright, I'll help you with Steve." Hop sighs, his shoulders dropping as he seems to unclench slightly. Seriously, that much tension cannot be good for him after being in a Russian gulag for almost a year. "But not because I think you deserve it. You were right, Steve deserves better, but he wants you and Joyce and the kids to be in his life. Be a part of it. That is the only reason I will help you. He deserves a better dad than the one he's had and for some reason he thinks you're like super-dad."

"I- How the fuck did I not- What the hell?"

Robin shrugs, "The human brain is good at weeding out what it doesn't want to see. You didn't want to see Steve until you had to and that realization brought you to me. So. Ignorance is bliss and all that."

"So what do I do?"

She checks her watch again. "He'll be running late, especially if the fissure he's checking out is as bad as we think it is. So you have time to run back home, get Joyce to make extra of whatever monstrosity of a casserole she's trying to make this week and you get your rugrats to figure out a way to be the last drop off after Steve takes the brats to the arcade later instead of sleeping off whatever knocks he gets on patrol today. Then instead of letting him head home you make him come inside for dinner. Use the excuse of finding out he's been doing patrols if you have to. But you make him go inside and sit his ass down and eat something and you let him just- let him just be, Hop." She's running out of time but there is just so much she wants to get through to him. "Just make him feel like you see him."

"I- I'll try."

"Yeah, sure. Just-" She bites back the vitriol she wants to projectile vomit in his direction. "Just don't hurt him again. He's more than just a babysitter or front lines muscle. And I will make you wish you were back with the Russians if you make him forget that."

"I believe you."

"Good." The bell over the door jingles again and she looks past Hop to see a group of teenagers making their way to the comedies. "Now I have to get to work and you need to not be here by the time Steve comes to check on me. So talk to you later, Chief."

"Right. Thanks for your help, kid."

She shrugs him off as he turns to head out. The teens are watching him not-so-discreetly as they try to act like they're looking through the latest releases. She forgets that the man is as much a mystery as the heavy-duty military forces that have taken over their small town.

"Alright, folks. What are we looking for today?" She still technically has a job to do even if the kids keep their distance from her like they do the rest of the Party who at this point have all been seen either spending time with said heavy-duty military forces or chasing something into the dark of the forest wielding weapons smeared in monster blood, or both. It's going to be a long day.

Tag list (I think this is everyone?)(if your tag didn't work let me know cause they don't always work for me Idk why):

@thelittleclare @jackiemonroe5512 @0body0disphoria0 @strangersteddierthings @lingeringmirth @dead-cherry-bitch @irethsune @ink777 @the-daydreamer-in-the-corner @ledleaf @pansexuality-activated @paintsplatteredandimperfect @kinryuuki @yikes-a-bee @altocumulustranslucidus @ohimamarigold @samsoble @sensationalsunburst @xxbottlecapx @y4r3luv @swimmingbirdrunningrock @flustratedcas @rootbeerandmusic @vinteraltus @wonderland-girl143-blog @failedstarsandgoldenclouds @steddie-as-they-go @steveshairspray86 @youdrewstarsxaroundmyscars @i-amthepizzaman @wormapothacary @croatoan-like-its-hot @maya-custodios-dionach @ineffable-monster-romancer @asquareinverona @ellietheasexylibrarian @pukner @bookworm0690 @nightmareglitter @joekeerysmoles @salchica @lawrencebshoggoth @iheartjennaaa @child-of-cthulhu @anaibis @rocochen20 @katdeerly @samcoxramblings

[atmilliways]

Wrong On The Money (51)

part 51 of 55 | 1894 words | Teen+

Blackmail fic on Ao3 | on tumblr

Summary:

Robin can’t believe what she’s hearing.  That Eddie, who knows a thing or two (hundred) about being treated like a freak, who’d fought with them in the trenches of saving the world from unknown horrors, would do something like that. To Steve. 

You'll notice I have at least an estimate for the final chapter count now. I always love seeing notes like this on other fics, where the author is like "Okay I think it's just one more chapter guys" and you glance up to the fic info on the Ao3 page and there's definitely like, five more. We'll see how well my optimism ages.

Anyway, have some protective Robin rage from her POV!

51.

The phone rings late a few nights after Starcourt, jolting Robin out of an uneasy sleep. She shoots out of bed, racing for it before her parents wake up. She manages to get downstairs and down the hall in just a few more rings and snatch it up.

“Hello?” she whispers. 

“Robin?”

Her hands clench on the plastic handset at the sound of Steve Harrington’s voice coming down the line. “Steve!? What’s wrong, are you okay? Did something happen?”

“‘M fine,” Steve rushes to assure her, stumbling over his words. “I’m fine. I just. . . . I’m calling to say I’m sorry. For dragging you into this shit, 's my fault because you were working with me, and Dustin can’t talk quiet worth a damn, and. . . . I’m so, so fucking sorry.”

Okay, not so much stumbling as slurring. Okay. Steve Harrington is calling her drunk in the middle of the night. Sure, that’s a relatively normal thing to happen after . . . everything. 

“Have you been drinking?” Robin hisses. “You’re drinking with a head injury?”

“I’m, ‘m drinkin’ by myself,” Steve mumbles, and he sounds so young when he says it. She wants to crawl through the phone line and hold his hand. 

“Where are your parents?”

There’s a long silence on the other end of the line, and then Steve says, “On a business trip.”

“Still? I thought you called them.”

“Yeah, they. . . . It’s an important trip. Meeting. Thing, I d’know.”

Robin chews on her bottom lip. On one hand, she barely knows Steve, really. She has no idea what his home life is like, but it doesn’t seem great that his parents know about his concussion, broken ribs, etc. but still didn't bother to come home and look after him. That’s what parents are supposed to do.

On the other, this is the guy who loudly drew the Russians’ attention so they took him for interrogation instead of her. And even if that was plain old sexism on the Russians' part, he’d still run his mouth even after being pummeled, insisting that she wouldn’t tell them anything. They’d almost pulled off his fingernails, for fuck’s sake.

“Steve,” Robin says firmly. “I can get to your place in fifteen minutes on my bike, okay? I’m gonna hang up and do that, and can you do me a favor while I do?”

“Of course Robs, anything,” Steve slurs easily, and goddammit. This dingus is going to end up being her best friend, isn’t he?

“Drink a glass of water for me while you’re waiting, okay?”

“Okay,” he replies. She can practically hear him nodding, which also can't be good for the already bruised brain knocking around in there.

She gets there in under ten, discarding her bike halfway up the driveway and darting up to the front door in case any of the neighbors are awake at this hour. It’s unlocked, and for a moment she’s frozen with terror at that fact—what if the Russians are back and they’ve tracked Steve down? What if they’re here? 

But then she goes inside and finds Steve in the most bland foyer she’s ever seen, sitting on the carpeted stairs with his head in one hand and a half empty glass of water in the other. He looks up at her approach, eye and cheek and lip still swollen. It looks like he got chewed on and spit back out, and all she can think of is how small his voice had sounded over the phone. 

Mr. Popular, Mr. Cool, cries on her shoulder while telling her how sorry he is again. He tells her about Nancy’s friend Barb and how she died in an alternate version of his pool because he’d thrown a stupid party. He tells her about bullshit  and like we didn’t kill Barb and Nancy leaving him for Jonathan Byers until he’s hiccuping—

When he throws up on her shoes he apologizes for that too, and she womanhandles him upstairs to his room and the attached bathroom with her thoughts racing. 

Steve Harrington used to be a total douchebag. She hadn’t been wrong about that. But this is a totally different Steve, stumbling and full of guilt and a hefty portion of his dad’s liquor cabinet. This is, actually, a lot like Steve on Russian truth drugs. (There’s even a bathroom this time too, Steve hunched over the toilet and Robin trying to keep his hair out of harm’s way.) This is the boy who doesn’t treat her like a freak for liking girls instead of guys. The only person she’s ever told her secret, and isn’t holding it over her head the way she’s always had nightmares about. (Her nightmares have plenty of new material to work with now, anyway.)

He’s all alone, and not taking very good care of himself when left to his own devices after a buttload of fresh trauma, from the looks of it. So. 

Robin is going to be here for him as much as she needs. Not because she owes him or anything, but because this Steve deserves to have someone relentlessly in his corner. And since his parents seem to have abdicated that responsibility, that someone will just have to be her.

-

Robin can’t believe what she’s hearing. 

That Eddie, who knows a thing or two (hundred) about being treated like a freak, who��d fought with them in the trenches of saving the world from unknown horrors, would do something like that. To Steve. 

But there’s also Wayne Munson, who she knows now. Not as well as Steve, who looks more comfortable in this house than she’d ever seen him back in his parents’ place, but he’s a good person. A kind man, someone she can’t fault Steve for helping to save. 

The two things don’t fit in her head, and she has to pace while trying to wrap her brain around it because otherwise she feels like she might explode. 

“Okay,” she says, finally wheeling on him with a glare. “Okay. So you knowingly let some guy blackmail you, homophobically and hypocritically, because you thought he was hot and Dustin was sad?”

“Well—”

“And,” she interrupts shrilly, “you didn’t tell me. You hid not having enough money to eat—”

“I still ate,” Steve protests. “And I learned to make all those casseroles, you love those!”

Robin storms back over to the couch. There aren’t any decorative pillows like there had been at his parents house, because the Munsons don’t go in for that extra frills sort of shit. She snatches one of the cushions instead and thumps him on the head with it, making him drop his pizza in his lap.

“Aw shit, toppings side down. . . .”

“Steve,” she snaps. 

He looks up, holding the rescued slice in his hand and licking a glob of red sauce he’d scraped off his jeans off his other thumb. “I didn’t tell you,” he agrees, voice heavy. “You would’ve tried to talk me out of it and I couldn’t just. . . . Not after Barb.”

“Just because Nancy said so doesn’t mean what happened to Barb was your fault, Steve,” Robin reminds him. She's about ready to throw the entire cushion at him in frustration because they’ve had so many talks about that now. Has none of it stuck?! “But guilt or not, that doesn’t make what Eddie did okay!”

“I know,” Steve says quickly. He’s got those big damn puppy dog eyes that all but bleed sincerity. “I know it’s not okay. And that it’s not my fault about Barb.” There’s pepperoni and veggies on his leg; he starts picking them up and putting them back on his pizza. “I didn’t know that if I’d done something different, she might not have died. But I knew that about this, okay? Eddie was working himself to death and it still wasn’t enough, and I knew I could help.” 

The without getting the shit kicked out of me goes unspoken, but Robin knows his track record with that and can read between the lines. It’s almost definitely the easiest time he’s had saving a life since 1983.

But still.

"Blackmail isn't the cornerstone of a stable loving relationship, Steve!"

“I know.” Steve sighs, and goes to rake a hand through his hair before remembering just in time that it’s covered in pizza sauce and grease. “I know. . . . We’ve saved each other's lives though, Rob. And we’ve talked it all out, okay?”

She frowns, squeezing the couch cushion in frustration. “Not okay.”

“Come on. I know it was a shitty thing to do, and so does Eddie. You forgave me for years of being a douchebag, can’t you forgive him for this one thing?”

One thing. One thing, when said thing was threatening to out someone? Holding it against their throat, against Steve’s throat, like a broken bottle with actual intent to spill blood? How could she possibly, possibly not hold that against Eddie, when just the thought of it made her adrenaline spike and pulse race because being forcibly outed in Hawkins fucking Indiana is literally her own worst nightmare?!

Or, well. One of.

Steve is still giving her the damn puppy dog eyes. He looks so sad, whereas he’d looked so happy a moment ago, in a dumb, goofy, sappy way that she’d never quite seen from him about any of the parade of girls he’d gone out with since after Starcourt. It’s almost as though he thinks his epic quest to find The One (she can never help but crack a smile when she thinks of it as ‘finding his Suzie,’ and she’s upset right now, dammit, this is no time for grinning) has finally come to an end.

With Eddie Munson, who until ten minutes ago she would have said was a nerdy but perfect match for him. 

And, okay. She doesn’t want to be the reason Steve looks sad. He’s old enough to make his own decisions, and if he seems happy with them then it’s not up to her to rip that happiness to shreds, even over perfectly reasonable concerns. 

After a long moment Robin drops back into the couch next to him, clutching the cushion to her chest. “I still wish you’d told me. I would’ve shared my food with you. I would’ve known not to bum off of yours, and forced you to take gas money!”

“Robs, no,” Steve groans, then shoves a big bite of his messed up pizza slice in his mouth and keeps talking around it. “I told you a million times, I don’t want to be treated like a taxi driver.”

As if she doesn’t know for a fact that he threatens Dustin and the rest of the kids that he’s going to start charging for rides at least once a week. He’d explained to her once—after a night hanging out with Argyle and the rest of the older Hawkins crew, and everything had been hilarious at the time—that he doesn’t want the little shits to take it for granted and act as entitled as he used to.

Steve Harrington is too fucking good for his own good these days, even if he is a total dingus about it a lot of the time. 

And she’ll deal with Eddie later. Right now she’s hanging out with her best friend, and that’s far more important than putting the fear of Robin into a skinny metalhead.

[frownyalfred]

thinking about the expert masseuse Alfred hired for the family that is paid a small fortune annually to provide massage services and ignore so, so many things. No questions, no remarks, just quality service and an ironclad NDA that, if broken, would probably topple said masseuse’s entire family line.

Things Alfred is paying them to ignore, in no specific order:

Bruce’s spinal hardware courtesy of Bane :)

weird amounts of muscle on everyone, even the kids (despite them allegedly not working physical jobs)

scars

FRESH scars

the fact that every joint in Bruce’s body clicks when moved/manipulated at the tender age of 42

Olympic athlete level physiques

rotator cuff injuries across the whole family

scars that are definitely from bullets and/or acid splashes

old signs of what looks like torture (Bruce)

Dick’s entire left arm is basically screws and plates (he “fell really bad” once)

every single family member takes deep tissue massage with max pressure with 0 complaints

calluses

no really, the weirdest fucking calluses

[strangersteddierthings]

@rebelspykatie :)

They stay for the whole show.

Robin is too lost in thought to even hear it. She was so sure that the way his face lit up when he saw Steve meant something more but now- she can’t deny what they just saw. They both witnessed Eddie hanging onto every word the bartender said. Being fair the lighting up could be because Eddie has a crush on Steve. But to what extent? She knows Steve is hurt by what he’s seen, and she is sympathetic. However, they’re not dating. They aren’t exclusive. Eddie is allowed to flirt with other people.

She knows Steve is a hopeless romantic who is going to be thinking the worst because when he likes someone, they’re the only person that matters. And yes, she thinks he deserves to be with someone who is the same way back, but she also knows other people don’t usually dole out endless devotion until the dating part starts.

So, yeah, Eddie is allowed to first with other people.

What is not allowed, is if he’s flirting with Steve just for fun. She won’t let him hurt her best friend by simply having a skin-deep crush, or worse, no actual crush at all and he’s just trying his best to fluster Steve. Because Eddie doesn’t flirt with every boy. He doesn’t treat Jonathan or Argyle with the same flirtatious looks and touches as he does Steve.

She’s got to ask Eddie. It’s as simple as that. If Eddie isn’t crushing on Steve, she’s going to demand he stop. If he is, then he needs to decide if he can be Steve’s and only Steve’s.

She leans in real close when the set ends, as Eddie is bidding his goodbyes to the audience, and says, “Hey, if you don’t want to talk to Eddie right now, run out the door and I’ll stay. Tell him you got a migraine and we gotta go or something.”

Steve nods, giving her hand a ‘thank you’ squeeze before he slips from the chair and heads out the door as Corroded Coffin starts packing up. She’s got a decision to make now. If it comes down to it, does she tell Eddie about Steve’s crush. Will she have to to get him to back off?

She slides from her own chair, to stand by the table and wait. It doesn’t take too long for Eddie to approach the table.

“Hey Robin! Steve in the bathroom?” Eddie grins at her.

“I saw you flirting with the bartender,” she says instead of answering. “Is that a thing?”

She watches as Eddie throws up walls, gets defensive. “What of it, Buckley?”

“I just… I was so sure you had a crush on… a mutual friend,” she says, and Eddie goes from defensive to confused. “I was so sure. But then you treated the bartender the same way and I guess I just wanted to know if you were serious. Or if you just flirt with anyone cute.”

“Well, not everyone,” Eddie says the words slowly, like he’s trying to be careful with them. “Did you… is there a reason you’re asking?”

Again, she bypasses his question. “You planning on going home with the bartender?”

“Is that any of your business?”

He’s getting defensive again. She won’t get any answers if he does. She steps closer and lowers her voice. “Just concerned, as a fellow friend of Dorothy, y’know?”

It’s a bit of a lie, a bit of truth, and it makes Eddie soften to her. He shrugs. “I dunno. I thought I’d hang out with you and Steve. See where the night took us.”

Now that she likes the sound of. That Steve is the top of his list for being around, even before older bartenders. “Steve isn’t feeling too well. Might have a migraine starting. But he might still want to hang out if it’s not here. Can’t really control the volume here, y’know?”

Eddie nods, but does look over his shoulder at the bartender.

“Munson!”

Eddie whips back around to look at her. “What?”

“Steve or the bartender. Five seconds to pick.”

“Steve.”

Robin nods. “I’m going to tell you something, and you should really listen. Are you listening?”

He rolls his eyes but lets her tug him slightly closer so she can whisper in his ear, “if all you want from the bartender is a roll in the hay, that’s understandable. But if that’s all you want from Steve, then you need to walk away now, and seal the deal with the bartender.”

He tries to jerk away, but Robin’s got a pretty tight grip on his shirt. “What I want is none of your goddamn business-“

“Edward Munson, I will not let you hurt my soulmate anymore than you have!”

That stills them both. She shouldn’t have said that, he shouldn’t have heard it. She can’t shove the words back into her mouth, though, so all she can do is double down. “We both saw you flirt with that bartender when we arrived. And I was so sure you liked Steve. Just Steve. I talked him into believing you liked him and we both walked in and saw- Steve is a hopeless romantic and even though he didn’t say it out loud, I know seeing that crushed him. So. If you want to a good time, you can let that bartender tuck some hair behind your ear again. Or, if you want to be Steve’s boyfriend, you can go out to the parking lot, find the BMW, and explain to Steve that you do want him, and only him.”

For the longest time, Eddie doesn’t move. They probably stand completely still for three minutes before Robin breaks it with more talking.

“Eddie, if you want to be with Steve, that will mean full monogamy. We both know what Nancy did to him. If you can’t- if you aren’t done with your sleeping around and flirting era, that’s fine. Have your fun. But you have to stop flirting with Steve if that’s the case.”

“I- No one’s- Robin, are you sure? I couldn’t let myself believe so, are you sure?”

“Eddie, there is nothing in the world that would make me lie to you about this. Never this.”

She watches his adams apple bob as he swallows thickly. “No one’s ever wanted me to be their boyfriend. I don’t know- I don’t know how.”

She rolls her eyes. “If that’s your only hang up, I’m sure he’ll be happy to learn with you. But you gotta go tell him that bartender meant nothing right now if you want that shot.”

“Yeah. Yeah, I do,” Eddie says, and heads towards the door without a single backwards glance.

She’ll wait in here for another ten minutes or so. Just to give them some time.

Robin convinces Steve that Eddie is interested in him, just based on how frequently he flirts with Steve. Uses the same logic that Steve deployed to convince her to give Vickie a shot. Except, there’s no doubt about who Eddie could be attracted to. He’s gay and doesn’t really flirt much with women, keeps it more surface level. 

But with Steve, he’s all over him, getting in his personal space, tapping his chin, batting his eyelashes and draping himself over his lap during movie nights. Steve’s confident in his newly discovered attraction to men, and subtly tries to turn up the charm on his end. Flirting back, giving as good as he gets, but it never seems to affect Eddie. 

Steve’s gotten used to striking out. Never really catching anyone’s attention these days, what with the lackluster attempts at being interested in the mundane things some of the girls drone on about, to being afraid to sleep over for fear of a nightmare tearing him from sleep, to the way no one makes his skin buzz. He’s given up the pursuit of anyone else, setting his sights on Eddie, pushing gently at the boundaries that barely exist between them. 

Until the first time Steve and Robin are invited to see Corroded Coffin perform at the Hideout. He watches from afar as Eddie bounces across the room before the show. He hasn’t spotted them yet as he makes his way over to the bar. There’s a cute, older guy bartending, probably in his late twenties, buzz cut hair, ripped leather vest accentuating his arms. 

Steve watches in what feels like slow motion as Eddie leans over the counter to get as close as possible to this guy. That mischievous smirk that Steve’s used to seeing pointed at him is out in full force. Eddie is saying something, looking up at this guy, reaching out to squeeze a bicep and getting playfully batted away. Eddie lets the guy tuck a strand of hair behind his ear, almost a caress along the side of Eddie’s face. 

And there’s a moment where Steve feels like he’s floating on air, suspended in a moment in time before a catastrophic shift changes his trajectory. He’s careening to the ground at break neck speed and crash landing all in a matter of seconds. A vice-like grip squeezes his heart, reminding him that he’s not special. He’s dissecting every memory of Eddie flirting, finding nothing consequential there in the wake of this discovery. 

How stupid could he have been to think that it meant anything? That must be why Eddie never reacted to his advances, they were just a blip on his radar. He’s got this guy wrapped around his finger, just like he’s had Steve. Except Eddie’s never blushed like that around him, or let Steve tuck his hair away. 

As much as he wants to turn around and get the hell out of here, he promised he’d come to Eddie’s show, even if looking at Eddie right now feels like a shot straight through his heart. That inexplicable draw to Eddie doesn’t just disappear. He wants to cross the room and drag him away from this guy, but what right does he have to do that? 

He feels Robin’s hand slip into his, turns to look at her, sees a mirror image of how she looked on the grimy bathroom floor of Starcourt, letting Steve down gently. Their friendship past the point of needing to verbally communicate anything. Robin gently tugs on his arm to convince him to sit at a table, clasping his hand underneath it tightly when Eddie finally spots them and Steve has to pretend like he’s fine. And he is fine. 

But he’s also not. His heart is cracking open with each note Eddie sings, the fault line growing until it feels like he’s split in two, bleeding out on the floor of this disgusting bar. When is he going to get it right? When is it his turn to feel wanted? Nancy and Robin hurt, but he feels blindsided by this one. He was so confident he was right, that this time it was reciprocated. 

But maybe he’ll always be the fool.

[writingadjacent]

Robin knows Steve well. She basically knows what and when Steve is going to do and say. Not to say that he doesn't have free will but... well... Robin knows.

He sat on her bed, his eyes staring at the ceiling and Robin very much knew that whatever he said next was either going to be really insane or very important. Robin paid attention, not that she wouldn't have anyway.

"Do you think men are hot?"

Robin looked over at him. Apparently, Steve had chosen insanity. "No. that's what being a lesbian means, Steven."

"No, I mean, like, even though you're not like... gonna kiss them, they're just, objectively hot," Steve said, his eyes glued to the ceiling.

"No?" Robin said, lying down next to Steve. He tilted his head to lean on her shoulder a bit. "Men just... look like men. I wouldn't find them hot or cute or whatever."

"Am I not cute?" Steve looked up at her with his big eyes, bugging them out like he does when he wants something from her. "Come on Rob-bob, am I not cute?"

She shrugged slightly, laughing and dodgeing when he tried to smack her pillow into her face. "God, yeah okay, you're cute, Steve. Tell me about the guy you found hot, though."

Steve laid back down, almost entirely ignoring her attempts at eye contact. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"You wouldn't ask if you didn't find someone hot."

"Ugh," Steve said, hiding his head in his hands. "I didn't really... I mean, I guess I've always found guys hot-"

"Wait for real?" Robin asked, not judging, just interested.

"Yeah. And you know, I just thought all guys thought Tom Cruise was kind of hot and that Han Solo had really pretty hair. But then, I don't know, as I got older I realized they didn't and you know, I just didn't really want to deal with that..." Steve paused, his eyes on the ceiling as Robin rolled to curl into his side, her head on his shoulder. He brought his arm around her shoulder, bringing her closer to him.

"But then you met me?"

Steve nodded, "Yeah, basically. I guess I made my own way in the world and I stopped paying attention to what people thought of me and honestly, I just stopped paying attention to that part of myself for so long that I didn't notice it had come back until recently."

Robin nodded. That made sense. It was dumb but that made sense. "So which guy did you find hot enough recently for it to knock you back to yourself?"

Throwing his hand over his face, Steve muttered something that, despite her closeness to him, Robin had no idea what he'd said.

"What?"

"mmmmm Munson."

Robin blinked. She sat up and stared down at Steve. Blinked again.

"You know, you could absolutely have picked a worse guy but at the same time... Eddie?"

"He's kind of a loser."

"Yeah, very much so."

"It's really hot."

"You know what, Steve?"

"What?"

"You're allowed to think that..."

[sundropcass]

99% of what I read is angst but you know what my secret favorite fanfiction category is? Outsider POV. I love a good fic where we’re in the perspective of characters who have no idea what the fuck is going on and are stuck watching our MCs be absolutely ridiculous. I love every version of this trope. It could be mostly text based. It could be mostly social media based. As long as it checks the boxes? I’m all in. You don’t understand. I think the first one of these I read was with Sam and Dean Winchester as kids in school from the perspective of a guidance counselor. I have been ruined. I have read every fic I could find with the premise of SkyGem’s Retirement AU (Yuri On Ice). I read White Collar DC crossover fanfiction despite not knowing or caring about White Collar because I treat it like outsider POV fanfictions with a fun identity reveal element. My favorite My Hero Academia fanfiction of all time is entirely made up of social media bit and bobs (tumblr posts, twitter posts, text message chains, etc). I am currently reading a Carmen Sandiego fic like this and it is such a crack fic. It is so unserious. I can’t put it down. I am so hooked.

[angstyentropy]

Tim, Damian, Dick, and Stephanie met up on a rooftop, the others were on bed rest after a bad fight with Joker a few days ago. They were preparing to confront Two Face, who was making a commotion. It wasn't the type of commotion a Rogue usually caused so it had to be on purpose. That was very bad, it usually meant a trap.

They made their way over to where Two Face was spotted, he eventually came into sight. He was twirling around a bat, it was caked with dried blood. "He might be trying to get a rise out of us by flaunting a murder weapon" Tim started analyzing, "Spoiler, Wing search the area, I'll talk to him while Robin and Hood sneak up behind"

Each of them took off... except Nightwing. "Get a move on Wing, lives are likely at stake"

Dick took in a deep breath- it was audible over the Coms and jumped down onto the same building as Two Face.

"Nightwing! Just the little bird I was looking for" is the trap for Dick? What is he doing?

"is there no other way to get my attention?" Huh?

"Seeing as it's worked both times I don't think I need another way"

Damian landed on the roof before any of his siblings could stop him. "What is the meaning of this?"

"Oh? You don't know?" Two Face smirked and showed off the bat "See the blood? That's the blood of the first Robin"

Steph spoke into the Com "Wing, Is what he's saying true?"

"that was a long time ago"

"But you still remember it! I beat you within an inch of your life, you would have died." He cackled "The Bat wouldn't leave your side for months afterwards."

Please deny it, please deny it.

"What do you want?" He didn't deny it.

Two Face smirked "I've been having some trouble with people in Bludhaven stealing my weapons, I was hoping that we could work together?"

...

Steph opened her mouth hesitantly before closing it and trying again "Wing, when you said that it was a long time ago, what did you mean?"

Dick sighed and looked down. "I think it was my first or second year as Robin so I was around... 10?"

Frowns adorned everyone's faces and though he'd never admit it, once Damian and Dick were alone Damian gave him a tight hug in an attempt of comfort.

[moshaeu]

some doodles from the past few days

[carlthecloaked]

Wrong Number, Right Person

tried writing something after a while :3| 1.3k words | no cw |

|chapter 2|

Steve was pissed.

This date was not working out. At all.

He thought he was going out with this sweet guy from California. At least, that’s what his Tinder profile had made it seem like. But clearly, he had been very wrong.

Where would he even start?

First of all, the guy wouldn’t shut up about his ex.

Like, she sounded great and all, but maybe don’t talk about her the entire time we’re on a date?

Secondly, he wasn’t even listening to what Steve was saying. Half the time, he was scrolling through Instagram, looking at his ex's profile. Laughing at whatever post he was looking at, or he was texting someone else.

Third—and perhaps the worst part—the guy had the personality of a wet sock. Zero energy. No conversation skills. Just dull. Clearly not the charming, funny guy he’d seemed to be over text.

Steve sighed internally. Guess that was his fault for believing his Tinder profile was real.

And then, as if the date wasn’t already bad enough—

“So, are we going to your place or mine? "

Steve barely stopped himself from gaping. He forced a polite smile instead, setting down his drink.

“Yeah, I don’t think this is working out,” he said smoothly, placing his half of the bill on the table. “I have to go.”

The guy blinked, as if he hadn’t just bombed the entire date.

“But wait—”

Steve walked fast out of the cafe, he had to get out of there quickly.

“Ugh, that was the worst. I have to go tell Robin.”

While walking to the subway, he winced as he opened his backup phone. It wasn't as good as his currently broken phone. He totally didn't drop it in the toilet. Nope, that never happened.

He sighed, scrolling through his messages. He still hadn’t updated his contacts, so every number looked unfamiliar. Normally, he’d recognize Robin’s name instantly, but now? It was just random numbers.

He just figured he would text the most recent number, It'll probably be fine.

Steve: WORST date ever. like worst ever. robs i swear to god i wish i could turn back time and never swiped right on him at all. if you ever see me texting him again, throw a microwave at me

Unknown Number: any personal preference or do i just chuck it at you

Steve: chuck it

Steve: robbie i swear it was SO bad

Unknown Number: oh i didn't realize you'd actually think i was your friend

Unknown Number: uh yeah so this is not robbie

Oh. Steve blinked at his phone.

Huh.

That was… unexpected. But not bad, necessarily. Just—Huh.

He stared at the message for a second longer before shaking his head, exhaling through his nose. This was fine. Totally fine.

Steve: oh god

Steve: i'm so sorry wrong number

Unknown Number: it's fine lol

Unknown Number: but how bad was it though, like on a scale of “awkward as hell” to “can the ground swallow me whole?”

Steve hesitated.

He shouldn’t keep talking. He should just apologize again and move on.

But… what else was he doing today?

Steve: definitely “can the ground swallow me whole?” territory

Unknown Number: okay now i'm definitely invested. spill the tea

Steve: dude. he kept on going on and on about his ex, i swear it went on for 30 minutes. THIRTY. MINUTES.

Unknown Number: 🚩🚩🚩 IMMEDIATE red flag, redder than the color red

Steve: RIGHT??? and when he finally stopped he just kept scrolling on his phone

Steve: he was stalking her insta too 😭

Unknown Number: are you fr???

Steve: i wish i was lying but nope

Steve: then when i tried talking about literally anything else other than his ex he’d just respond with “yeah” or “whatever”

Unknown Number: what does that even mean??????

Steve: i have literally no idea

Steve: he even had the NERVE to ask if we would go to his place or mine

Unknown Number: the AUDACITY. the sheer unhinged delusion. did he think he was charming?????

Steve: LMAO stop i can't💀

Unknown Number: i bet he thought you 'd swoon bat your eyelashes and say “oh my god, yes! let's go to another place where you can pretend i'm not there!”

Steve lips curled at the stranger’s response before replying back

Steve: honestly i wouldn't be surprised if he thought that i should be grateful for his presence

Unknown Number: i can't believe you suffered through that

Unknown Number: no wait, you didn't suffer. you endured and you survived. for that you deserve an award. a dramatic opera performance

Steve: i hate how funny you are

Steve grins at his phone.

Unknown Number: you can repay me by continued conversation ;)

Steve: okay but you have to say who you are though

Steve: please don't tell me this is my professor🙏

Unknown Number: lol no definitely not your professor

Unknown Number: but i kinda want to keep it secret now, adds to my mysterious aura

Steve: no hints? :(

Unknown Number: i have hair

Steve: wow that really narrows it down. i totally know who you are.

Unknown Number: good luck finding it out ;)

Steve tilted his head, amused.

There was a pause.

Steve stared at his phone for a second, drumming his fingers against the back of it. He wasn’t sure why, but something about this felt… different. Not bad, just—unexpected.

He should probably just let it go. It wasn’t like it mattered who this guy was, right?

Still.

Steve: so are you gonna give me a real hint or do i just have to suffer

Unknown Number: hmm. suffer sounds fun

Steve let out a small, incredulous laugh, shaking his head. Great. Just his luck to end up texting someone who enjoyed messing with him.

And, okay. Maybe he didn’t mind that much.

The subway car jolted slightly as it began to slow, Steve barely looked up from his phone, used to the way the train moved as it went into the station. The train came to a stop, the doors opening with a mechanical chime, letting in the sound of city noise and passengers.

He stood up getting out and walking to his and Robin’s apartment nearby, glancing at his phone occasionally to check if the stranger texted again.

Steve barely had the door open before Robin’s voice rang out from the couch.

“Finally! What took you so long? Did the date go well?”

Steve groaned, kicking off his shoes and collapsing onto the couch next to her.

“You have no idea. I swear to God, worst date ever.”

Robin gasped dramatically, “Worse than the girl who ordered an expensive meal and made you pay?”

“Way worse”

“Way worse than the one who left you at the bar for three hours?”

“Robin.”

“Okay, okay tell me everything.”

Steve launched into the whole story, how the guy wouldn’t stop talking about his ex, stalking his ex’s instagram, the dry-ass responses and the sheer audacity of asking if they were going to his place or their shared apartment.

“That’s tragic Steve, how are you so unlucky at this?”

“I have no idea man, I guess I just attract weird people.”

“Why didn’t you text me?”

Steve suddenly sat up, remembering. “Oh, speaking of.”

Robin narrowed her eyes.

“So, uh I may or may not have accidentally texted a stranger about it.”

Robin grinned in amusement. “What?”

“I thought it was you!” Steve said defensively. “I haven’t updated my contacts on this phone yet, and I just picked the most recent number in the list.”

Robin stared. “Wait. Hold on. You had a whole conversation with a stranger instead of asking who they were like a normal person?”

Steve shrugged. “They were funny.”

Robin gasped again, dramatically. “Oh my god. You like them.”

“What? No. I dont even know who they are!”

“But you want to”

Steve opened his mouth to reply, then closed it.

Robin grinned, throwing a pillow at him. “You absolute idiot. We’re figuring this out right now.

Steve caught the pillow. “Fine. But if this turns into some embarrassing rom-com nonsense I’m blaming you.”

“Oh it’s already a rom-com, Stevie. You just don’t know it yet.”

Steve sighed, but smiled anyway.

Maybe he did want to know.

[ashoss]

let tim dunk on batman its funny

w/o text under the cut :3

[thekaiserroll]

A smooch for Snooj

[jesncin]

Tell your children this was Supersons era trinity

[envyenvys]

do you mind..?

[every-aj-needs-an-angel]

Okay this one's been stuck in my head all day but I have absolutely time to write it so please share this vision with me

Try as they might, Steve and Robin couldn't get tickets to Chrissy Cunningham's arena tour, but they could get tickets to a festival she was playing.

The last thing Steve ever wanted to do was go and stand in a muddy field for sixteen hours while they waited for the headline act. But he was pretty sure Robin was in love with her favourite musician, and he wasn't about to deny his best friend a chance at love.

So he helped her make personalised t-shirts because honestly all the other bands in the line-up kinda sounded like they sucked.

His read, "Only Here for Chrissy" on the front and "I'm Steve" on the back and Robin's read "Chrissy, Will You Be My Girlfriend?" on the front and "If Lost, Please Return To Steve" on the back.

And it turned out, as they stood against the barrier in a not so muddy field, on a lovely, warm, but overcast, May day, that even bands that sucked could be fun. Even if it was only because they spent their day with earplugs in, so their eardrums wouldn't combust, bitching about each artist's lack of ability to put notes or an outfit together.

During the lunchtime intermission, the pair made friends with the lesbian couple next to them, Kayla and Jess, who were also eagerly awaiting Chrissy's set and similarly liked to mock those who committed crimes against sound and fashion. Steve was glad to have met them, they were really nice, and he felt better about leaving her to use the bathroom or to fetch food, knowing Robin was in safe hands.

He also felt better about letting her wander off, not that it stopped him from stressing out when she and Kayla had been missing for over fifteen minutes. He spread himself out to keep their places against the railing with his back to the stage, watching the crowd intently. Jess wasn't quite as chatty once they were alone, but she seemed content enough, bobbing along to the band that'd appeared on the stage.

Steve didn't turn back around to face the stage until he spotted the girls heading back towards them, he gave them a wave and turned around to look at the guys who hadn't been attempting to destroy anyone's hearing and was met with the face of the most gorgeous man he'd ever seen. Pretty face, long curly hair tied up in a bun, muscle tee showing off his many tattoos, piercings and chains and glittery Docs; Steve felt himself owl blink and blush.

God's gift to mankind was kneeling centre stage, guitar in hand making the most beautiful sounds Steve had ever heard as his fingers flew over the strings, and it was only when the rest of the band kicked back in that the man looked up, winked directly at Steve, and then jumped back to his feet, spending the rest of the song bouncing around the stage.

Steve only realised his mouth was agape when Robin finally arrived next to him and elbowed him hard in the ribs, giving him the same look she did whenever he was embarrassing in the club. He watched the rest of the Corroded Coffin, according to the backdrop, set in awe. Screaming and clapping along when they wished everyone a great day, throwing picks and drumsticks into the crowd and taking a bow; patting each other on the back as they wandered offstage.

As soon as it was quiet again, Robin wanted to know what the hell was wrong with his face and honestly, he couldn't answer her. He didn't even believe in love, not for himself at least, and he certainly didn't believe in love at first sight. It didn't stop him from spending the next couple of hours watching the faces at the sides of the stage, hoping to catch a glimpse of his new favourite guitarist, though.

As soon as Chrissy hit the stage, Steve got lost, between filming the set and watching Robin trying not to hyperventilate when Chrissy spotted her t-shirt, pointed to her, and giving her a coy little wink, blew her a kiss.

"An old school friend is here with me tonight, and I'd like him to help me out with this next track. Especially for the beauty in the front row, this is Girlfriend!"

The crowd went wild as the beat kicked in, but Steve was still watching Robin because it looked like she'd stopped breathing altogether. That was until she gasped loudly and started smacking Steve in the way she always did whenever she got overly excited; pointing wildly at the stage, and it was only when he looked over he saw Corroded Coffins guitarist bouncing up and down next to Chrissy.

Instead of the black muscle vest and skinny jeans he'd been sporting earlier in the day, he had changed into pale blue board shorts and a baggy white t-shirt that read "Hey Steve!" written in black sharpie with a giant winking smiley face underneath that could only really be seen when he swung his guitar around his back to copy Chrissy's dance moves.

The song ended, and the friends hugged, Chrissy waving him off the stage and calling out, "Eddie Munson everybody!" letting the crowd go wild for her friend before launching into the rest of her set.

By the time Chrissy had actually left the stage, Robin looked exhausted, having screamed and sung and danced herself out. They hung around a bit, said goodbye to Kayla and Jess, wishing them a safe journey home, and they were just taking one last look at the now empty stage when he heard someone yell his name...