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Summer, 1985
After spending her entire sophomore year trying to murder Steve Harrington with her mind, it makes sense—in the cosmic, ridiculous way it always seems to be when it comes to her life—that the first thing Robin sees when she walks into the Scoops Ahoy back room for the first time ever is Steve’s ugly, confused face staring at the freezer.
Robin didn’t even really want to get a job, and the bright, peppy, and admittedly nauseating nautical walls of Scoops Ahoy definitely wasn’t her first choice of workplace. But everyone in the band had been talking about getting jobs for the summer so they could save up for college applications next year, and Robin simply did not want to be left out of the conversation.
It helps, of course, that Starcourt opened just in time, giving the young breadwinners and bored working-age teenagers of Hawkins something to do for the summer.
She would have wanted to work at the bookstore. Or maybe even at the record shop beside it. But both places had turned her down. The bookstore had elected on hiring an older, permanent staff that won’t leave when summer ends ( which, to be fair, is a sensible business move) meanwhile the record shop had Mary Williamson as part of the hiring team, and Robin knows in her heart—after the great 1984 trombone fiasco—that she probably ripped Robin’s application form to shreds once she saw it.
So it’s Scoops Ahoy then. It’s an entire summer of slinging ice cream to annoying kids, dealing with parents who would rather not deal with their annoying kids, the stupid sailor uniform she has to wear due to company policy...
And, apparently, it’s also an entire summer of having to be Steve Harrington’s co-worker.
Steve must have noticed earlier on that Robin has been glaring holes at the side of his face, because he doesn’t even startle when he turns and waves at her, finally acknowledging her presence.
“Oh, hey, you must be one of my co-sailors.” Steve laughs out awkwardly. He slams the freezer shut and leans against it, one hand on his left hip. “I’m Steve Harrington.”
“I know who you are.” She rolls her eyes, violently opening her locker and shoving her bag inside. “We literally go to school together.”
“We do?” He replies, brows furrowed in confusion. He squints, trying to get a better look at her face. And, oh, wow, as if he could get any worse in Robin’s eyes.
The asshole doesn’t even remember me. Her inner voice chuckled darkly. Sat in front of me for an entire semester and asked if he could borrow my pen and he still doesn’t remember me.
“You must be Janice!” Steve says, snapping his fingers. “We only have shifts every weekend afternoon though.”
“Ja—I’m Robin. ”
“Oh... Oh. Right, I thought you were a dude when I saw your name on the—"
“Nevermind.” Robin snips, waving her hand in front of his face to cut him off and to stop him from looking at her more. “Do you know how to scoop the ice cream? Show me how to scoop the ice cream.”
Starcourt officially opening in the summer is strategic, Robin thinks, because it means people with their precious, full wallets would be flocking to the mall en masse to escape Hawkins’ unnecessarily hot mornings and afternoons. Which then means that Scoops Ahoy is more often busy than not. Which means Robin would have to face people and spit out their stupid ocean of flavor spiel more often than not.
It also means that for the greater part of the week, her time is spent in the company of Steve Harrington.
They’re going three weeks as co-workers now and so far, Robin begrudgingly has to admit, Steve hasn’t been that bad at all. Still a dick, still kind of clueless for the most part, but certainly no longer the asshole she remembers him to be back when he still hung out with Tommy and Carol. In fact, Steve may be one of the more entertaining parts of Robin’s otherwise monotonous week.
She has an incredibly detailed list, in her head, of what she has noticed about Steve:
- Steve is oddly chatty. He loves gossipping and is friendly with most—if not all—of the moms that buy ice cream from the store. He takes an extra two or three minutes catching up with them, trading smiles and stories and waving goodbye when they leave the store. Then he’d turn around and talk to Robin about some of them. The parts he deems worthy and juicy enough to share with Robin. She’s pretty sure that by this point, she knows how to differentiate which mom just wants her husband to care and which mom definitely has a murder plot going on against their man.
- Steve’s friend group is pathetically composed of the children he babysits who can’t all be older than fifteen years old. She knows all of them by name and by their defining characteristics, not because of how much Steve talks about them (which he does, all the time) but because of how much they spend time pestering her and Steve while they’re on shift. There’s three boys: Lucas, Mike, and Will. Lucas, who says please and thank you and is very polite. Mike, who flips Steve off and makes a point to emphasize just how uncool he thinks Steve is. Will, the quiet Byers kid who went missing over a year ago. And there’s one girl. A redhead named Max, who is just as snarky as Mike but definitely likes Steve more if the way she always briefly hugs Steve when he lets them into the back to sneak into the movies is any indicator. There’s another kid, too, who Steve is apparently much closer to and watched Star Wars for but Robin hasn’t met him yet.
- Steve doesn’t like it when the lights flicker. They get blackouts every now and then, probably due to the shitty wirings in the Hawkins electric company still adjusting to the presence of a huge mall eating away at its electricity reserves, but Steve never reacts to them much. It’s when the lights flicker on and off that gets on Steve’s nerves. She doesn’t really know how to unpack that one.
- Steve doesn’t like his parents.
- Steve can be weirdly insecure.
- Steve cannot hit on women. At all. Robin feels weirdly vindicated by this.
- Most of all, Steve Harrington does not want to admit to having shitty eyesight.
The last point is what compels Robin to stare at Steve Harrington at the moment, hunched over the table and still staring at the manual he’s been reading for what must be twenty minutes now. Still stuck on the first page.
Noticing it all started in the little things. How Steve can pick her out from the foodcourt from afar but gets startled when she finally sits down in front of him, as if he didn’t just see her walking towards him a moment ago. How sometimes Steve asks her if he got the flavor assignments right and Robin says yes but she still has to discreetly switch pistachio and mint choco chip every time . How whenever Robin adds a tally mark to her funny little You Rule | You Suck board, Steve has to squint and take a short while before he could fully count how many marks there are already.
And, well, Robin can be mean to Steve, sure, but she never mentions his eyesight to him. Mostly because it’s shit to make fun of someone for something they have no control over, but also because she knows a thing or two about refusing help, and Steve is kind of the type of guy to just not wear glasses until the inevitable finally happens and he walks off a ledge because he couldn’t see the warning signs right in front of him.
So Robin just sighs. She tucks her scooper back in her apron and walks to the back room, snatching the manual from Steve’s hands.
“I was reading that!” Steve yells, glaring at her.
No you weren’t. “I wanna read it too. Besides, it’s your turn to sling ice cream. I do not want to be out there when that creep who asks for too many free samples of orange sherbet but doesn’t buy anything at all gets here.”
“But I was—”
“Nope. Zip it.” She cuts him off, sitting on the counter and smiling at him. “I’ll just tell you what this says later during our break. Now go. Shoo.”
Steve stands, rolling his eyes. There’s a small smile on his face, too, and Robin gets the thought that maybe Steve knows what she’s doing. He probably does. He’s weirdly observant like that.
“Fine. Fine.” He says, pinning his hat back on top of his hair. “Thank you, Robin.”
Robin smiles back, already flitting through the pages, and just waves him off.
Winter, 1985
Trauma fucking sucks.
If someone were to ask Robin from before July 1985 what the most traumatic thing she has ever experienced is, it would probably be when her dad violently swerved their car to avoid a dog back when she was 12, and they almost hit another car from the other lane. It took Robin a full four months before she could ride in a car again, electing on biking to school and everywhere else instead of being dropped off by her dad.
But then Starcourt happened, and if someone were to ask Robin now what she considers to be her most traumatic experience, she’d have to lie and recount that story from her childhood. Because all those stupid NDAs she signed aside, it’s not like anyone is going to believe her when she says yeah I got tortured and drugged underneath Starcourt and then I had to fight a giant flesh monster composed of the melted bodies of everyone who died in that “fire” last July. People would not only not believe her, they’d also think she’s crazy.
Except for a handful of people, of course. And Steve Harrington. Especially Steve Harrington.
The first week after Starcourt was rough. Robin couldn’t close her eyes for more than thirty minutes, or sleep without interruption. Every time her lids are shut she’s taken back to the Russian bunker, limbs restrained and tied with her back to Steve, who he was sure was no longer breathing. Her mind would take her back to the rapidly descending elevator, their screams echoing around her ears. She would feel the needle piercing her neck, injecting drugs into her veins. She’d remember the panic. The fear.
The second week after Starcourt, then, finds Robin in the company of Steve Harrington. Willingly and sought out, this time. Robin needed someone who would understand, and Steve was all too willing to help her through it.
(Sometimes Robin thinks back on the first night, when she scaled his window and startled Steve from staring at the wall, hands firmly gripping a bat studded with nails. Sometimes she would lose herself in the memory of Steve unlocking the window without question, pulling her shivering form into his bed and holding her while she cried and until she fell asleep. Sometimes, she would think about how she stayed there for a week.)
Robin was afraid, at first, that whatever friendship she had formed with Steve would eventually fizzle out and fade into nothing. That the trauma they experienced miles underneath the earth where Starcourt was built would not be enough to keep them together.
Privately, she was also afraid of the secret she told Steve and what it would mean for them moving forward. Sure, Steve had laughed when she told him about Tammy. Sure, Steve didn’t push her away right after. Sure, he let her sleep in his bed and eat in his house and sit on the passenger seat of his car. But the fear remained in Robin. That all of it was a long, drawn out joke. That one day Steve would wake up and kick her out of his house and his life and she would be able to do nothing about it.
But it didn’t happen. And it kept on not happening. Steve and Robin became Steve-and-Robin. And when they finally let each other in, one night after raiding Steve’s father’s alcohol closet, they found themselves loving each other completely and wholeheartedly.
Which leads to Robin now, staring at the ceiling of Steve’s bedroom after a terrible nightmare, headache worsening over the fact that Steve couldn’t read the expiry date on his bottle of Tylenol.
“You know, you really need to wear glasses.” She remarks offhandedly, still staring at the ceiling and willing the spinning in her head to go away.
“No I don’t.”
“Yes you do. Everyday you drive us to work I get so scared it will be our last. Remember when you almost ran over that duck?”
“Okay, first of all ducks should be kept in an enclosure so they wouldn’t wander off into the road. It’s dangerous to keep animals out like that. Second of all, I can see things just fine if I just focus on it, so shut up.”
She rolls her eyes. “Uhm, you literally did not recognize Max waving at you from outside the store the other day. And she has bright red hair and a bright yellow raincoat on. You put at least a hundred different tapes in different sections every time because you couldn’t read the genre labels I pasted on the aisles. And you literally cannot read the expiry date on that stupid bottle.”
“I—You—Ugh. Fine! Fine! I need stupid glasses. I’ve been needing stupid glasses since 1984.”
“See, was that so hard to admit?” Robin says, turning to face Steve when she feels him lay down beside her.
“Well—It’s—I don’t know.” He sighs, wrapping an arm around Robin and whispering his words into her hair. “It wasn’t too bad before Starcourt, but the world definitely started blurring at the edges for me after Jonathan beat my ass behind the Hawk.”
Robin hums. “Still kind of want to punch him for that, by the way.”
“It’s fine. I kind of deserved it for the most part.”
“Still, you’re my best friend. I kinda have the job to defend you. Or, at least in some parts. I still can’t believe you let Tommy spray paint that on the sign.”
“Yeah, well, pre-November 1983 Steve was an asshole blah blah we already talked about this.”
“Hmm.”
“Wait–I’m your best friend?” He asks in wonder.
Robin flicks his stomach. “Tsk. Of course you are. Besides, it would be pathetic if your best friend was a 14 year old, so you’d have to settle for me.”
“I’m not settling Buckley, jeez. You make it seem like it’s a hardship being friends with you.” Robin blushes, grateful she’s hidden from Steve’s view. “Well. Anyway. Then Billy happened and then Starcourt and just... It got worse.”
“And you didn’t get glasses because?”
Steve groans. “Is it okay to say that I don’t know? It’s—I mean, you saw me at Starcourt and how I was with that fucking uniform. My appearance... for the most part was just a really important part of me. Still is. And after the world just kept trying to end it became one of the few things I actually had control over.”
“And having glasses will change that?”
“I don’t know. Maybe?” He sighs. “It’s stupid. Forget it.”
Robin raises her head, glaring at Steve. “No it’s not. It’s a perfectly valid fear, okay? And I may not get it entirely but I know what it’s like to—to want to have control over the parts of yourself that you let others see.
And—okay it’s not really the same because my lesbianism compared to your face it’s... okay, nevermind, this whole analogy is stupid. My point is it’s okay to feel things, Steve. They don’t always have to be rational. You can just feel them.”
“You—wh—Wow, you really do ramble.”
“Ass.” Robin snorts, pinching his nose.
“Loser.” He replies, flicking her ear.
“Dick.”
“Bitch.”
Robin gasps. “Stephen James Harrington! For shame!”
“Robin Cecilia Buckley!”
“I—Don’t—I told you never to use my full name!”
“You started it!”
“You are such a child, Steve. A dingus. An absolute—”
“Okay, okay, enough.” Steve laughs, holding a pillow over Robin’s head and cutting her off. “Will you go with me tomorrow, then?”
“Go with you where?”
“To... uh... where would one get glasses?”
“There’s an optometrist downtown. You want me to go with you?”
“Of course I do.” Steve says, rolling his eyes. “You’re the one pushing me to get them.”
So Steve and Robin head to MySight after their shift at Family Video , the sole optical shop in Hawkins and—seriously, what’s it with this town and the ugly names they have for their shops?
Steve’s prescription basically confirms what they both already know. You can only get away with so many violent hits to the head before your eyesight finally gives up on you, and it doesn’t help that Steve’s family, apparently, has a record of shitty vision on account of the fact that both his parents wear glasses.
“You didn’t think that was helpful to tell me beforehand?” Robin hisses when the doctor walks away, telling them to pick out the frames for Steve’s lenses.
“It never came up. How about this one?” Steve replies, holding up a pair of thick square frames.
“Ugly. They’d make your head look more square.”
“My head is square?”
“Have you not looked in a mi—you’re changing the subject. Steve, why are you changing the subject?”
“It’s just,” he sighs, clearly frustrated. Robin is about to back down and apologize when he finally continues. “I don’t—Remember what I said last night about—about appearances and what I could control?”
“Yeah?”
“Just—A small part of me was... afraid, I guess, that if I do wear glasses, I’d look in the mirror and see my dad’s exact face staring back at me.”
Oh.
“Oh.”
“Yeah. That’s—I don’t know. It’s stupid.”
“Steve,” Robin says, hand grasping Steve’s own firmly. “Hey, remember what I said about feelings?”
“Yeah.”
She nods. “Well, that’s always applicable, okay? You’re allowed your reservations.”
“Thanks, Rob.”
“Of course. Now, try this one on.”
“Not the round ones—Jesus Christ, Buckley, are you gonna poke my eye out or something?” Steve snarks as Robin pushes a blue pair into his face. “Blue isn’t even my—You are bad at this. You are so bad at this. Buckley, come on.”
In the end, they both decide on a black square frame with a rimless bottom, and Steve pays for it and waits for the attendant to put his lenses into the frames while Robin waits on a bench outside, staring at the birds and the clouds.
Robin must have dozed off, because the next thing she knows she’s being rudely awakened with a flick to her cheek, Steve Harrington’s ugly mug staring down at her with a pinched look on his face.
“Ow. Dick. Are you done?”
“Yeah, I’m done.” He replies, sitting beside her. Steve grabs the case from the paper bag and opens it, staring at his glasses for a while. Robin softens, placing a hand on his shoulder.
“Hey, we can do this at your house. Come on. I’ll watch the road for you so we'll get there in one piece, alright?”
Steve merely takes a deep breath. And then another. Finally, he shakes his head.
“No. I—I mean, I’m gonna have to get used to people seeing me with them in public anyway, right?” He shrugs. “Might as well get over it now. Close your eyes.”
“Why do I have to close my eyes, I already saw you with the frames.”
“Yeah but this is like, official. With the lenses and all.”
Robin groans, throws her hands up in the air. She closes her eyes anyway despite protesting. She counts, reaching twenty.
“Okay, you are taking too long. I’m going to open my eyes n—” She doesn’t get to finish her sentence as she feels Steve holding her face.
“Holy shit!” Steve yells, a wide grin stretched across his face. It makes Robin smile too. “Oh wow. Oh—You have freckles!”
“You already know that, dingus.” She giggles, rolling her eyes. Her cheeks squished in between Steve’s palms.
“I never knew there were so many though. Oh my God. Oh wow. You have a scar right here on your nose.” Steve says, tracing it with his thumb.
“I fell on my face when I first learned how to ride my bike.”
Steve snorts. “Of course you did. Holy shit. I never knew the world could be this clear and bright. Fuck, I can see the sign from behind you so well, Robbie. We’re closed on Sundays. Wow.”
“See. Told you. If you got glasses back when your eyes started to get shitty you would have—”
“Robin?” Steve whispers, cutting her off.
“Steve?”
“You’re so—I—You’re beautiful, Robs. Tammy was an idiot for never looking at you.”
Robin pauses, a soft smile still on her face.
Because this is what it’s all about, with Steve. Why she means it when she calls him her best friend. Why she’s no longer afraid of him leaving. Why he’s crawled his way into her heart and stayed there. Steve, with the shitty eyesight and the hero complex and the brutal honesty. Her Steve. The Steve to their Steve-and-Robin. They’re going to be just fine.
“You’re not so bad yourself, Stevie.” She replies, taking his hands away from her face and holding them in hers. “Really, really not bad at all.”
Fall, 1986
In the aftermath of the world almost ending for the fourth time and finally no longer ending for good, Steve and Robin get fired from Family Video.
Robin laughed when Keith handed them their final pay, Steve side-eyeing her like she was crazy. And, well, maybe she was.
She simply found hilarity in the fact that now that the threat of evil dimensions and creepy flesh monsters are finally gone for good, she could finally live her life the way she was supposed to: Normally. And just when she needed the stability and monotony ( welcomed, this time, after all the shit she’s been through) of her stupid job, she gets fired from it.
Steve had made a joke about how he and Robin are probably cursed. Probably the talk of every employer in Hawkins at this point. Something about how everytime Steve and Robin get hired in the same place together some weird shit is bound to happen. Steve makes another joke about how they should probably separate; find different places to work in.
“Besides,” Steve had said, tossing a bag of popcorn inside Robin’s microwave oven. “You’re only sticking around for your gap year. Exactly a year from now you’re off to college. We have to get used to being apart.”
Robin simply rolled her eyes. “Do you want to be apart from me?”
He groaned. “Ugh, no. I think I’ll kill myself if I have to spend an entire workday without talking to you.”
The beginning of fall, then, finds Steve and Robin employed in one of the new coffee shops that popped up in the strip that was built where Starcourt used to be. They initially refused to go near the place, the fear and trauma of Russian guards and dying in underground bunkers still lingering in both their minds. But the revived—wait, no. The Chief-Who-Never-Died Hopper had sworn up and down, along with some eccentric man named Murray Bauman, that the base is just as gone as the upside down, and Steve and Robin had nothing to worry about anymore.
Plus, they both really needed the money anyway. And the coffee shop was the only place that was not only hiring but were willing to take them both.
But the thing about coffee shops, like Scoops Ahoy, is that they rely a lot on customer service. Making friends with their patrons, smiling even though you want to pour hot water all over your face, dealing with everyone with a certain aura of joy even when they’re being incredibly annoying. Robin would want nothing more than to be able to stick a knife into most of their customer’s faces, especially the ones who tap their feet impatiently while Steve prepares their coffee. But she can’t do that. She can’t—
“Honestly, what is taking so long?” The guy in front of her huffs, face red and barely concealing his annoyance. Robin grips the pen tightly, resisting the urge to get an assault charge. Instead, she plasters her most practiced customer service smile and nods at the guy.
“Excuse me, I’ll be right back.” She says, turning back before he could respond and walking to where Steve is staring at the tray where they put all their milk.
Glasses absolutely missing from where they’re supposed to be perched on the bridge of his nose.
“Oat milk is the one on your left.”
“I’m sorry.” He whispers, finally grabbing the correct carton. “I’m sorry, it’s fine. I got this from here.”
“Steve, hey, it’s fine. Where are your glasses? I can handle this order and you can grab your glasses.”
“Iforgotthemathome.” Steve mumbles, placing the lid on top of the cup.
“What?”
“I—” He sighs, handing the cup to the irate customer who stomps (and God, when did grown men become this childish) out of the store, slamming it shut on his way out. “That dude didn’t even leave a tip.”
“Steve, hey, what were you saying?”
“I forgot them at home.” Steve whispers, rubbing his temple and leaning against the cashier counter.
“Again?” Robin groans, leaning beside him and poking his torso, careful to avoid the scars that she knows still aches from time to time. “Why do you always forget them? You should be wearing them all the time anyways.”
“I just keep forgetting that I wear them every time I take them off. And then by the time I remember them it’s too late.”
Robin groans louder. “We can ask Eddie to drop them over for you?”
Steve shakes his head. “Eddie has that out of town errand for Wayne today. And all the kids are in school. And, well, unless you think I should ask Nancy to drive down from Boston, go over to my house, and drop my glasses off for me...”
She smacks his shoulder, eliciting a chuckle. “Asshole. God. You know what, we can’t keep doing this. Do you have your prescription with you? The one where the doctor wrote out your lens grade and stuff?”
“Yeah, it’s in my wallet. Why?”
Robin doesn’t answer him, simply going to their break room and rifling through his bag to find his wallet. She grabs his prescription, places it on her own wallet and walks back out.
She ignores Steve’s curious stares the entire afternoon and evades his questions about what she needs the prescription for. Later, at the end of their shift, she makes up an excuse about heading to her friend who works at the salon a few stores down from their coffee shop, leaving a confused Steve waving goodbye from the door of his car.
Robin, instead—once she sees Steve’s BMW pulling out of the parking lot—heads to MySight and picks out another pair of glasses for Steve.
With the uglier, round frames this time, so he’d get the incentive not to forget his own at home again.
She’s honestly forgotten that she even did that, the whole thing shoved into the back of her mind the moment she shoves the new pair inside her bag. It doesn’t come up at all until weeks later, when Steve picks her up from her house and the familiar frames are once again missing from his face.
“I know, I know.” Steve grunts once she’s inside, buckling her seatbelt for her. “We have time to go around and stop by my house again to pick them up. I j—What’s that?”
Robin doesn’t even realize that her hands basically moved on autopilot, outstretched and shoving the case with the extra pair she got into his face.
“They’re—I—Ugh. Remember when I took your prescription?”
He nods.
“And—Well. Look, you keep forgetting your glasses, and Steve honestly you look so pathetic every time you do and it’s just sad when I have to watch you squint knowing full well that you don’t have to anymore. And I’m really tired of how customers treat you like you’re not paying attention or just being slow on purpose so I got you a spare that I can carry around because, let’s face it, you and I are attached at the hip and—”
Steve hugs her.
“Thank you.” He whispers, all choked up. The waver in his voice makes tears well in Robin’s eyes too. “Thanks for caring.”
“Of course I care, dingus.” She sniffles, hugging Steve closer despite the stick shift digging into her knee. “I always do. Come on. We’ll be late again. Christine is on duty today and she is so hot , Steve, and I really do not want her to have a bad impression of me."
Steve smiles at her as he pulls away, taking the case from her hand. Robin discreetly wipes the tears from her cheeks, laughing when Steve opens the case and sees what’s inside.
“You’re evil. You are so, so evil. You hate me. I hate you.” Steve complains, carefully lifting the round, ugly frames. Still, he puts the glasses on.
Still, the smile on his face stays.
Spring, 1996
“Hi, do you sell lens cleaners here?”
“I’m sorry?” The saleslady replies, looking up from her magazine.
Robin adjusts her bag, sighing. “Like. Those cloth things you use for cleaning glasses so you don’t scratch them?”
“Ah, lens cloth. Yeah, we do. Let me just check for stock in the back.”
“Great. Thanks.” Robin says, walking to the sunglasses displayed on a rack once the lady leaves for their stock room.
Honestly, Steve is way too grown up for me to still be doing this for him. She grumbles in her mind, picking up a pair of red, heart shaped sunglasses and wondering if she had the money to buy them. Thirty years old and still forgetting how to take care of his stuff. Fucking idiot.
And, God. Thirty. Robin isn’t thirty yet, but twenty-eight is pretty fucking close to the big three-zero. When her life fell apart at the cold floor of their Russian captors’ torture containment room she never expected to live beyond 17, let alone the next minute while that stupid Russian doctor took out that stupid bone saw ( to this day she still couldn’t quite stand being in the presence of anyone using a saw of any kind, or hearing the sound of a drill).
But here she is. Twenty-eight. And Steve is thirty. The kids are officially no longer kids, all well into their mid-20s at this point. Nancy Wheeler is her girlfriend now ( and isn’t that something 17 year old Robin, who called her a priss in the dirty bathroom of the Starcourt cinema, would definitely piss her pants over), and even Steve is building what life he could with—after all these years, still surprisingly enough—Eddie Munson.
1987 saw Robin leaving for college, heading to the other side of the country for her first year in Berkeley. It was rough, being separated from Steve. Everyone else in their friend group had thought it weird, how inconsolable they almost were at the idea of being apart. They found the fact that Robin left her house early to spend her last week in Hawkins in Steve’s house weirder.
She didn’t care though, what they thought of her and Steve. They were never going to get what it was like for them down there under Starcourt. Or what it was like in the bathroom that same night, secrets spilling between them like water. Or what it was like at night when Steve is insecure and Robin is afraid and all they have are each other. They’d both stopped caring what people thought of them, instead just doing what they wanted to and never apologizing for it.
The first months were hard. Robin will hear something funny in class and turn around, expecting Steve to be there but he isn’t. She’d be at work during the weekends and enter the break room, prepared to launch on a long tirade about the evils of working retail only to find a co-worker who hasn’t spoken a word to her ever since she clocked in for the first time ever. Robin would go home, do her homework, see something interesting on the TV and then pick up the phone to call Steve, only to remember that he’s in Indiana and she’s in California, thousands of miles away, no longer just around the corner for Steve to just drop by her porch.
The time zones sucked, too, so daily scheduled calls were established. California and Indiana were only three hours apart, but the difference is enough in that they couldn’t be on call much. Either Robin was at class or Steve was at work. Or Robin was asleep while Steve was already waking up and getting ready to pick up the kids for school. They had settled on two: 12:30 PM Robin’s time and 3:30 PM Steve’s, because Robin would be on her lunch break and Steve would have just arrived home from his shift at the coffee shop, and 8:00 PM Robin’s time and 11 PM Steve’s, because Robin would be done with her homework and Steve would have an extra hour before he finally crashes at around 12 AM.
It worked fine, their system, for Robin’s entire first semester. The calls helped a lot with easing the knowledge of the distance. With the gnawing feeling on her chest everytime she steps in a class and she has no one to talk to. She knows it helps Steve, too, especially after long shifts and arguments with the kids—who, really, were well into being independent teenagers by that point.
So it was scary when, for over a day and a half, her phone didn’t ring.
He had skipped their full 8 PM call the night before, citing migraines and a busy shift completely draining his energy. Robin had simply hummed in sympathy, hanging up the call with a reminder to take his medicine and sleep immediately once she hung up. But then he didn’t call again in the morning, and Robin had shrugged that off too, with the thought that maybe Steve just slept in and forgot.
But when Robin had looked up from her notes, eyes watery and fixed upon the clock that says it’s 4 AM in the morning, she realized with a certain amount of fear that Steve didn’t call her at all.
7 AM found Robin pacing her apartment up and down, listing reasons as to why Steve could possibly not have called. She had come up with them and then shot them all down instantly the moment they popped in her mind. Too tired? No, Steve usually bounced back fast from his migraine spells if he took his pain relievers and slept early. The upside down is back? No, the kids would have called her and she would have packed her bags right away, rushing back to help in any way she could. Steve got murdered? No, nothing as bad as that. Max and Dustin would have told her right away, and she probably would have heard from it in the news if that were the case.
When she finally woke up from the crash of her caffeine-induced high and speculation it was already 12:35 PM, and someone was banging insistently on her door.
“Fuck!” She cursed, her head spinning from the budding headache that’s already blooming from above her eyes. She hobbles to the door, the tie of her robe stuck on her socks. The knocking continued.
“Jesus—Alright, asshole, can you—Steve?!”
“Hey, Birdie.” Steve says with a smile, two bags beside him and another one slung across his back. “It’s 12:35. Sorry I missed our call.”
She doesn’t let him say any more, instead jumping into Steve’s outstretched arms and hugging him as tightly as she could, the worries of the past day and a half melting away into relief and happiness at the sight of him.
Steve had, apparently, planned the entire thing the moment Robin’s dad drove her away from Hawkins and into California. He had talked to all their friends about it, Dustin and Max specifically, and made the decision to pack up his life and start a new one in California. Much closer to the beaches of the east coast, where Steve always wanted to go to, and further away from Hawkins, where Steve admits that he’s growing stagnant.
Most of all, according to him, he’d be much closer to Robin.
So Steve and Robin once again became Steve-and-Robin. Once the Wonder Twins of Indiana and now the pair taking California over by storm. Or, at least in their minds they were. Steve had started taking classes at a community college near what is now their joint apartment, and had applied to a similar retail job near the supermarket Robin part-timed at. It was good, what they had. The life they had built.
By Erica Sinclair’s graduation as valedictorian of Hawkins High School in 1993, the pull of the world has taken all of their friends away from Hawkins, lessening the small guilt she knows Steve still occasionally feels, especially when he catches a glimpse of the nail-riddled baseball bat tucked in their linen closet—a reminder of everything that has happened and who he has left behind in their haunted little town.
Some had gravitated to California where Steve and Robin are. Dustin, Max, and Lucas in particular were those who went to Berkeley too, trailing after Robin as freshmen during her senior year and once again being the irritating little kids they forever will be inside, begging Steve to drive them around everywhere as if they don’t have their own cars or licenses. She knows Steve enjoyed their presence, though, if his smile every time he hears Max and Dustin’s telltale arguing at their apartment’s front door every morning is anything to go by.
California, too, found Eddie Munson in its steadily growing populace. 1991 saw Eddie Munson, guitar clutched in his hand and the boxed contents of his uprooted life sitting in the van parked outside Steve and Robin’s apartment, at their front door, grin on his face and a glimmer in his eyes that Steve and Robin knows means that he is here to stay.
The will-they-won't-they dance of Eddie and Steve culminated on Robin’s first job as a translator, when she found them leaned against the railings of their apartment complex, lips locked in a heated kiss. So oblivious to the world and one Robin Buckley, who had audibly gagged and ran back to their apartment. Subsequently cackling, but so genuinely happy for her best friend, when Steve and Eddie walked back in with matching red faces and hickies.
By the time mid-1994 came along Steve and Robin were living in separate apartments. Same city, still, because they’re each other’s parasites who can’t live well or function without the other. And she admitted that needed the space, too, in the same way that Steve and Eddie did.
Because by some well-timed cosmic planning, Nancy Wheeler came barreling into her doorway and into her life. And then they fell into the same dance Steve and Eddie did before falling into bed. And then Nancy just... didn’t leave. She loved her and loves her still, and she didn’t leave.
Her musing on their lives is interrupted by the return of the saleslady, clutching in her hands a box of lens cleaning cloths. She pays for them, pays for the red, heart-shaped sunglasses too before opening the box and plucking one single cloth, tucking it in her pocket.
Later, when Steve picks her up from the mall with Eddie and Nancy in the back seat and motions for the smudged glasses on his face, she snaps.
“Thirty years old, Steve, and you still don’t know how to properly take care of your glasses.” Robin lectures, plucking the glasses from his face. She pulls out the cloth she tucked into her pocket and starts wiping the lens for him, making sure to get every crevice. It’s still the same frames they got from Hawkins. “Like, you keep replacing your lenses because they keep getting scratched. What is wrong with you?”
Steve rolls his eyes when she sees what’s in her hand, a fond smile on his face. “It's fine, Bobby pin. You don’t have to keep taking care of my glasses for me, you know.”
Robin rolls her eyes back at the stupid nickname. “I’ll do that, Stevie Nicks, when you learn how to properly take care of them. Which, you know, will probably be forever.”
“Ah... Guess you just have to stick around then, Robin Buckingham.” He smiles cheekily, pulling out of the driveway and into the road. Eddie and Nancy groaned simultaneously from the back seat.
“I can’t believe I’ll have to compete with that,” Eddie says, gesturing to Robin, “for the rest of my life. I mean, come on, front seat privileges? For life?”
“How do you think I feel?” Nancy snorts, leaning back into the seat. She shoots Robin a smile when she turns, to which Robin replies with a flying kiss. “Steve’s my ex. It’s weird.”
“Only you guys make it weird. Me and Buckley are going to be together forever.” Steve replies, eyes still on the road but one hand raised to show two fingers intertwined.
Robin repeats the gesture, a show of solidarity. “Yup. Steve and I are going to live forever and ever.”
Summer, 2003
Steve is strong. Robin knows this for a fact. He’s brave, too. In the days where the upside down was still a very real, tangible fear, she had heard stories about the two years she missed. How Steve had run back to the living room of the Byers’ bravely fighting off a demogorgon that was about to close its fleshy rows of teeth on Nancy Wheeler’s face, all while sporting a concussion from the same Jonathan Byers he’s saving.
She had heard about Billy Hargrove, saw the effects of it, too, when Steve had that nasty black eye for a couple of weeks. How he fought off Hargrove after he threatened the kids—Lucas and Max, specifically—and then guided them to the tunnels, still bleeding from multiple cuts on his face and a large one by his temple from the plate Hargrove had broken on his head.
She had seen it. All of it. In 85 begging their torturers to interrogate him first and bearing the brunt of their violence so Robin didn’t have to, and then in 86 when he had flung explosive after explosive beside her on Vecna’s tranced form.
He’s brave for a lot of things. Brave when he had come out to his parents and officially got himself kicked out of their family, months after moving to California for Robin. Brave when he almost got shot trying to stop a robbery while he was in an art supply store with Mike, El, Will, and Erica while they were visiting Max, Lucas, and Dustin in California. Brave when he kissed Eddie in front of the guests of the birthday party they attended for one of their friends, ignoring the strange and nasty looks some few people sent their way.
Steve is brave. Strong. Always fighting. Always read to face the world head on.
It made sense to Robin then—in the cosmic, ridiculous way it always seems to be when it comes to her life—that Steve left them all in quiet peace.
She had gotten the call while she was in Oregon with Nancy, visiting her parents who had moved there when Mike graduated high school and left for college with Will and El in New York. It was a happy evening, too. Karen had just shown her most of Mike’s baby pictures, to the guy’s embarrassment, and Holly had told her a story about the part-time job she got working in a Scoops Ahoy branch in their city.
He just didn’t wake up, was what Eddie said to her, apologizing profusely through his tears that the call came a day late. No one had known what the Wheelers’ new landline was, and Eddie had difficulty contacting them through their cell phones because of the summer storm that just passed through the Wheelers’ city, cutting off most of their cell towers and their reception. It’s—They said it’s probably from his brain. I don’t—we don’t really know yet. It was so sudden. He just didn’t wake up. I’m sorry, Robin. I’m so sorry. Steve is gone. I’m so sorry.
Robin doesn’t remember the rest of what happens next. The most she could remember was dropping the phone and sinking into the floor, Nancy’s concerned voice a staticky blur in her ears. She remembers Nancy’s loud cry and Mike’s confusion. She doesn’t remember anything else.
The airport had been closed due to the storm and won’t be available until the next two days, so they had to travel by car early the next morning. Robin doesn’t remember the rest of that, too.
Steve and Eddie bought their house in 1998. A modest three bedroom in San Francisco. One room is a guest room, reserved for when members of the party would visit and crash at their place.
The other is for Robin. A room she chose and decorated herself.
For when you’re tired of the world. Steve had said after they painted it a nice pastel yellow, handing her a copy of the house key. Or if you just want to come home.
Eddie greets her first when he sees her, stumbling down the steps of their front porch and pulling her in a tight embrace. She buries her face on his neck, wrapping her arms around him and rubbing a hand up and down his back.
“I’m glad you guys made it back safe. He’s—Steve’s inside. Just—come on, I’ll grab your coat.”
Nancy and Mike walk ahead of them, being offered condolences by those who knew of them as Steve’s extended family. And they were, in every sense. His real family, even, if Robin had something to say about it. She wonders if his parents were here. She wonders if they even know.
She walks through the hallway, eyes tracing the frames lining the entry to their home. Steve’s pride and joy. Robin remembers how Steve’s house in Hawkins had been so cold and empty. So devoid of life and memories that would normally grace a home that had a loving family in it. When Steve and Eddie got the house Steve’s first course of action was to buy picture frames. And then he just plastered on the walls the story of their lives through the years. Steve’s real family. The one he found and carved space in his heart for all by himself. A detailed account of the happy life Steve lived.
Robin stops in the doorway when she sees the coffin. A warm brown, reminding her of Steve’s hair. She sees Max and Lucas huddled together—Lucas occasionally wiping tears when Max turns her head. Dustin, eyes very clearly red-rimmed, even from where she’s standing, is talking to Joyce, Hopper, and Erica. El and Will are seated in the far corner, talking to Steve’s friends from college. Nancy and Mike are still standing with Eddie, Jonathan and Argyle having joined them now and pulling the both of them in a hug.
Her feet take steps forward without her permission, taking her from across the room to in front of where Steve is laying in a matter of seconds. She takes a look at him, laying there. So still. So quiet. She doesn’t recall a moment where Steve was ever silent for this long in his life. She half expects—no, fully expects Steve to stand up and tell her it’s all a prank. Or that it’s all a dream.
Either way, she’d take it in exchange for what is well and truly real.
Something’s wrong. Her mind whispers, a traitor that fuels hope even when she knows there shouldn’t be. Look at him. Something’s wrong with him. His face, Robin. Something’s missing, right? Something’s—
“—wrong.” Robin says out loud, rapidly reducing the noise in the room to murmurs.
“Robin?” Eddie asks from beside her, placing a tentative hand on her shoulder.
“Something’s wrong. Something’s—”
“Hey, Robin, come on. I think you need to sit—”
“Where are his glasses?” Robin asks, tears finally streaming down her face after holding it in for so long. “He can’t—Steve can’t—His eyesight is shit—”
“Robin, hey, please—”
“He can’t see without his glasses! Eddie, put his—Did he—Where—He can’t see without his glasses!”
She feels strong arms wrap around her, tugging her away from Steve and why are they doing that, Steve? Why are they taking me away from you? Steve, tell them to stop. Come on, Stevie, wake up for me. You can’t see without your glasses, right? We need to find them. Why are they pulling me away?
“Robin, come on.” Eddie mutters from behind her now, registering him as the arms wrapped around her waist. Distantly, through her own sobs, she can hear Max sobbing too.
“You need to put his glasses on, Eddie. He can’t see—He squints. He can’t—Did he forget his own again? I have—There’s a spare pair in my bag. Nancy? Nance—Steve—he can’t—Please—I—”
Eddie drags her away, sobbing with her as she collapses in his arms, overcome with a terrible amount of grief—as though he’s like her. As though the feeling of Steve’s death has finally dawned on him too like it has for her, even though she knows he’s had three days to come to terms with it already. Come to terms with a world that doesn’t have Steve Harrington. And never will again.
He takes her to her bedroom, a fresh wave of misery running through her veins when she sees the yellow walls and her pajamas folded neatly on top of her bed, like Steve always does when he knows she’s going to visit. Loud and violent sobs make their way out her throat, and she doesn’t stop crying until Eddie places her on the bed and tucks her in.
“I—They’re with me. They’re in my pocket.” Eddie whispers when her sobs finally subside into small sniffles. “His glasses.”
Steve’s glasses. The rimmed top and rimless bottom. MySight and a bright afternoon outside Hawkins. The world getting so clear to Steve for the first time ever. Steve telling her she’s beautiful and Tammy Thompson is an idiot. The ugly spare pair in her bag and the lens cloth still tucked in her pocket, still. Always. Steve’s glasses. The Steve to their Steve-and-Robin. The Stevie Nicks to her Robin-Lindsey Buckingham. Her Steve and his glasses.
“They’re here.” He continues, pressing a kiss on her forehead. “I—I promise I’ll give them to him, yeah? He won’t have to go without them. They’ll be there.”
“Don’t—don’t push them too far on his nose bridge when you put them on.” She replies, voice rough from the screaming and crying. Robin clutches the pillow tighter to her. “He hates that. It pinches his skin.”
“Of course.” Eddie replies, patting her on the shoulder. He tugs the blanket closer to her chin. “Come on, take a rest. I’ll be here when you wake up. He’ll be there when you wake up.”
Liar. Her mind whispers.
Robin closes her eyes. She curls up into herself tighter, as if the action alone could keep her whole again. She tries to imagine how Steve had hugged her all those years ago, when she climbed up his window and slept in his bed, wrapped in his arms for the first time ever.
Robin closes her eyes and sleeps until she can face a life without Steve Harrington in it.
She sleeps for a very long time.
1: Spring, 2005
The walk up to Steve’s is difficult as always. She turns back to Nancy and Eddie waiting in the car for her and raises her thumbs up, placating them and making sure they’d stay put. They had offered to come with her, even though they had already visited Steve earlier in the day, but she insisted on making the trek up alone.
Steve may be dead, but they’ll always be Steve-and-Robin. They’ll always have moments just for them alone, even if Steve was no longer physically there to share them with her. And this was definitely something that needed to be done first between the two of them.
She reaches the familiar grave, the inscription of his name greeting her like a hello. She traces the letters, a simple Steve Harrington, because she knows he would have hated it if they put his full name in. Robin ducks down, pressing a soft kiss on the stone. Normally she would make a remark about how it was probably dirty, but this is Steve. He’s always special. An exception to every single one of Robin’s rules.
“Hey, Steve-o. Sorry I haven’t visited in a while.” She says as she sits down, one hand still touching his gravestone. “I’ve just been very busy, you know. Haven’t had the time. I know you get a lot of visitors though, so you’re never really lonely. Those kids definitely know how to pester you from beyond.”
“It’s—I don’t know how to start. Eddie’s doing well. Better now than he was before. He’s picked up on jogging now, can you believe it? Athletic Eddie Munson. I thought we’d never see the day. You’re watching out for him, right? Every time he goes on a run?”
She hums. “Oh, and Max gave birth three weeks ago, that’s why she hasn’t been able to visit. Lucas and Erica are with her. Cute girl. Named her after you. Stephanie. I call her Stevie too. Dustin got annoyed because he wanted to name his kid after you. I—Okay, I think they all actually want to name one of their kids after you eventually. It’s bad. You need to put an end to this. Haunt them a little. They’re driving me nuts. And meet your new nieces and nephews, okay? We’re about to have a bunch of Stevies and Steves running around and confusing people in the next years to come.
Oh, and Jonathan moved permanently to California now. Argyle is still somewhere in Texas. Don’t know why. Guy is still as elusive and weird as ever. Joyce and Hopper finally left Hawkins, can you believe that? The old fear is finally gone. They live in Oregon now, too, to be closer to Mike and El. Will visits them sometimes, but he’s mostly in North Carolina doing research.”
Robin sighs, still running her thumb on the engraving of Steve’s name.
“I say this all the time but I wish you’re here everyday, you know?” She sniffles, the first tear falling down her cheek. “I—I guess I never properly mourned you, when you died. Or maybe I still don’t mourn you. And like, I wish I was there with you in the end everyday. Do you remember our last conversation? God, I think about it all the time. I still—the calendar you penciled our date on is still in my drawer, you know? Wheeler Gossip Mill—8:30 with Robin written on the Wednesday. God, what the fuck is wrong with you.”
Robin chuckles wetly. “Just—It’s not fair. You were... I mean, thirty-seven is too young, Steve. There was so much more you could have done.”
She allows herself to cry for a moment, the sobs leaving her as she presses her forehead on his gravestone. She wonders briefly how she ever lived a life without Steve before, because most days it’s like she doesn’t know how to anymore.
“I miss you. Everyday. I still—Sometimes I turn around and expect you to be there and you aren’t. I always have a lens cloth in my pocket ready in case you smudge your glasses again. I miss you when I sleep. When I eat. When I go out. When I take calls. There’s a lot—What do I do with this sadness, Steve?” She finally asks, wiping her cheeks with her sleeve. If he was there he would have smacked her hand off and handed her his own handkerchief.
“Asshole move of you, going on this adventure without me. What happened to living forever, huh?”
There’s no answer. There never is when she talks to him.
“But I’ll just have to settle for these unanswered questions, huh Stevie? Whatever. You always did like to piss me off.”
She composes herself, wiping her tears off fully and taking a few deep breaths. Her watch tells her it’s almost 4 PM, and she only has so much time left before Eddie and Nancy come get her and interrupt her date with Steve.
“That’s—Okay, I’m not here to argue with you. I’m here to tell you something. Wherever you are, you’re not allowed to laugh when you see this, okay? You listening, Steve? Close your eyes.”
Robin opens her wallet, takes out hers and Steve’s booth picture from Dustin’s wedding. She takes a familiar blue case from her bag, too. She unlocks the latch, takes the ugly round frames from where it’s wrapped with a lens cloth.
And then she puts it on her face. She looks at Steve in the picture. Warm smile and gray hair by his temples.
“Okay, you can open your eyes now Stevie. Behold,” she says, bowing a little. “Robin Buckley wearing the ugliest pair of glasses known to mankind. Are you happy that I’m gonna be stuck with this while you have that cool top-rimmed pair I chose for you with you?
Turns out with age comes blurry vision, and, well, I simply had to admit that I finally need glasses. Apparently I’m as stubborn as you. Whatever that means. Anyway, I figured you wouldn’t mind me using these because you already have your own always with you, right? These are mine now, Steve-o. Can you believe I still have them?"
She smiles. “Well, maybe you can believe it. I did carry them around for you, after all. Now I just carry them around for me.”
Robin takes a couple of minutes just staring at the sky, looking at the clouds and wondering if Steve is somewhere out there laughing at her. At how ill-fitting the glasses are and how weird they make her face look. She hopes she is. Steve deserves to be happy, still. After all these times. Even beyond.
“Steve, you are so handsome.” Robin whispers, echoing the words he spoke to her so long ago. “Tell me I'm not so bad myself?”
She takes the silence as an answer.
Robin places one last kiss on the stone before turning back, a whispered goodbye and a promise to visit him more often soon.
Eddie is just getting out of the backseat when she comes back, waving his concern off.
“You’re wearing glasses.” He says when Robin gets into the driver’s seat. “Nancy, why is your partner wearing glasses?”
“Oh! I—I thought we were—So there’s no more appointment to the optometrist then?” Nancy asks, hand placed gingerly on top of Robin’s.
“It’s—yeah, there’s no more appointment. I already had it yesterday. It’s—This was Steve’s spare pair.” She whispers. Eddie lets out a soft oh.
“I—I wanted him to be the one to see it first. I was the first face he saw when he got glasses. I want him to be the first I see, too.”
“I get it.” Eddie whispers, placing a hand on top of where Nancy’s hand is on hers. “It’s okay. You look like a dork.”
“Hey!” Nancy says, shooting him a playful glare. “Don’t say that.”
“It’s not a bad thing! Steve would have said it too!” Eddie protests, raising his hands up in surrender.
Robin turns on the ignition, pulling out of the driveway and into the road. Her first time driving with glasses. She looks at the rearview mirror and blinks, for a moment the image of Steve there for her to see. For Robin to remember and hold on to.
The world is clear and bright behind her.