Chapter Text

When the door slams open, Steve looks up fully expecting to see one of Dustin’s friends come storming through looking for the VHS release of Alien or Back to the Future. Instead it is Robin, who’s Monday evenings are supposed to be spent as far from the video store as possible.

Steve can feel his eyebrows go up. Robin usually moves casually, even tentatively. She rarely storms anywhere. Even when captured by Russians Robin maintained a sense of equanimity as she took the bizarre turn her life had taken with grace. The fact that Robin looks positively steamed is troubling.

“Can you believe this shit!” Robin says, waving something crumpled and white in Steve’s face.

“Rob, what even…”

“It’s Julliard, I got rejected,” Robin still sounds pissed as she says it, but now that she’s closer Steve can see the slight sheen in her eyes and the pressing together of her lips, “They didn’t even offer me an audition. They just cut me.”

“Shit, Robin. I’m so sorry.” Steve says, reaching out and pulling Robin into a tight hug. It had become clear during their time together as long-suffering coworkers that Julliard was a dream that Robin had been holding onto a tight as she could. Robin loved music more than Steve could ever recall loving something other than Nancy.

“You’ll still get into one of the other schools,” Steve says into her hair, “You’re too good not to. Julliard doesn’t know what they’ve just passed up on.”

“I don’t want to go to the other places.” Robin says into his flannel. “I wanted to go to New York with you and be amazing at Julliard while you made the Big Apple fall in love with you.” Steve laughs.

“Odds on that the city loving me were always nil. You’re the only dingus stupid enough to do that.”

“You’re the dingus not me. Stop talking about yourself that way, you’re going to be great.” Robin sounds steadier as she says it.

“You got into Berkley last week though. You’ll do great in California. I can see you now, all sunshiny and happy.” Robin pulls away from where she’s been leaning on Steve with a frown and messy hair.

“I don’t want to go to California. That’s where Billy came from, and Arnold Schwarzenegger.” Her voice is petulant as she says it.

“To be fair, it also produced Max and all those movies we try to make people rent. Besides if you hate it so much you can always go to Indiana State or one of those other places you got into.” Steve says. Robin huffs and circles behind him, hiking herself up onto the counter.

“I don’t want to do any of that.” She says.

Steve sighs before moving to sit next to her. Getting to know Robin has been an experience. Once she gets something in her head, like the notion that she and Steve are meant to be friends, or that she should help handle the Russians infiltrating the town, there’s just no stopping her.

“Robin you’re going to need to do something about it.” He says, wrapping his arm around her.

“I just really wanted to move to New York with you. And go to Julliard. Those two things.” She mutters petulantly. Steve grins at his best friend.

“It was a nice dream for a while.” There’s a stillness in the air after he finishes speaking, and Steve slides his gaze over to Robin and sees the small half smile that means that Robin is hatching a plan. His brow furrows as he takes her in.

“What if we did it anyway?” There’s a brightness growing in her voice as she says it.

“What do you mean? Move to New York together with neither of us having prospects?” Steve asks. Robin whips her whole body around to face him and the force of it bangs her knee against the counter in a way that has Steve wincing in sympathetic pain.

“Yes! That’s what I mean. Let’s just say screw it and go to New York. We’ll start a band or something, play little bohemian places until we make it big. Between the two of us we’ve got enough money to get an apartment for enough time to start really making money. Besides if worse comes to worst, you throw a mean party and I’m sure we can get enough people to buy into a shindig you host to make rent.” Her words tumble out and her tone gets faster and more excited as she speaks. Her expression is bright, but Steve still spends a long moment staring at Robin, because the whole notion is patently ridiculous.

“Robin, we’d crash and burn. I can’t do anything; I have literally zero skills. For fucks sake I needed you to help me get a job at a video store.” Robin is shaking her head before he even finishes speaking.

“You can sing, you’re great at karaoke. And like I said you throw a great party.” Robin grins at Steve and he can feel himself getting in the spirit of what she’s suggesting.

“I do mix a mean drink…” He says.

“We’ll be bohemians in New York and I won’t even have to deal with those pricks at Julliard.” Steve hops down with a laugh, and grabs Robin by the waist, twirling her through the air and off the counter.

“I love it.” Steve says as Robin cackles into his shoulder.

“Wow,” a voice comes from the door. “You two really need to get your shit together and date already. Also, way to do your jobs. Your commitment to this profession is noted.”

Their levity dies under Max’s skeptical gaze. Steve clears his throat and adjusts the rolled-up cuff of his flannel that had started to sag downward.

“Knock it off shithead.” It’s a weak recovery and by her raised eyebrow Max knows it. After The Battle of Starcourt, the rugrats had reaffirmed their bonds with each other in the only way they knew how, mutual fixation on random shit. While most of those fixations had manifested in the tolerable form of arcade trips and ham radio training sessions, one of the unpleasant things they obsessed about was Steve and Robin’s relationship or lack thereof.

“I’m here for Back to the Future on VHS. I’m doing date night with Lucas tonight, and it’s important that we have something to ignore while we make out.” Steve groans as Max wiggles her tongue at him.

“Ugh, vile. Follow me you literal child.” Max smirks at him.

“I can’t wait to see what happens when you tell Dustin that you’re leaving.” Steve shifts uncomfortably before turning to face Max, movie in hand.

“He knew I was going to be heading out eventually.” Max reaches out and plucks the VHS from his loose grip before waltzing toward the register where Robin is now standing.

“You know,” Max says, setting it down, “I wouldn’t bet on that. From what I’ve seen you just came up with this little shindig, and Robin got into Berkley.”

“So?” Robin says swiping Max’s blockbuster card through their cash register.

“Have you cleared it with the parents?” There is a long silence, and then Max bursts out into laughter. “Yeah, good luck with that.” Still laughing she picks up her tape, heads out of the store, grabs her skateboard and glides away.

Robin and Steve exchange a long look as she goes. Steve knows that his parents will be easy to convince on this because they’re already on board. His dad has been pushing for Steve to get a move on wooing Robin for months and when Steve voiced his desire to follow her to New York, potentially framed in an extremely misleading fashion, his parents were all for the plan. On the other hand, Robin’s family is simultaneously an enigma and a problem.

Steve has met Robin’s parents several times, and each interaction leaves him feeling a little bereft. Unlike his parents, they’re often present in the house, however their interactions with Robin are disengaged. While Mrs. Byers fights through the struggle of being a poor single mother with three kids by devoting herself to her children, Robin’s parents and she enjoy a carefully maintained neutrality centered around doing the bare minimum that is expected for parents in exchange for the bare minimum that one could want from a kid.

It is an armistice that stands only so long as expectations are met.

“They’ll go with it.” Robin says softly.

“They’ll be pissed.” Steve replies.

“Yep.” Robin finishes. Steve isn’t sure what to say. “They’ll go with it though.” Robin reaffirms after his silence, steadier this time. “We just need a good plan of attack.”

It takes the two of them three days to figure out how to broach the topic and to find a time to do it. Their plan is foolproof. Robin will offer to cook for her parents and mention that Steve is coming over. Steve will dress nicely and, as Robin puts it, keeps his big mouth shut to prevent his dingus from showing. They eat, be merry, and Steve presents them with a cake from a the bakery on main; then, over dessert and coffee, they strike.

It’s a good plan with a high chance of success and Steve believes in it firmly until he rings the bell on the Robin’s door and it opens to the tightly controlled face of Mr. Buckley who greets him with, “Good, the Romeo pulling our daughter into a life of destitution is here,” and Steve begins to think that something may have gone wrong.

“I don’t really…that’s not…okay.” Steve stammers out as he follows Robins father into the house. “Me and Robin, that’s not a thing.”

Robin’s mother’s face is tight from where she stands in front of the dining room table arms crossed. Robin is sitting across from Steve, and her face is the picture of apology.

“Our daughter has a future,” Mrs. Buckley hisses at him, “She has potential, and you want her to squander it so the two of you can run off and, what, busk in New York?”

“Actually,” Steve tries, before Mr. Buckley cuts him off.

“We have accepted the friendship between the two of you in good faith, but you are pulling her off track the way you went, and it’s simply unacceptable.”

It’s nothing that Steve hasn’t been waiting to hear since Nancy Wheeler agreed to get a milkshake with him; still it stings. It doesn’t help that Robin’s parents aren’t entirely wrong. She has a great opportunity at Berkley and taking off to New York is a choice off the beaten path. There’s any number of ways that it can go wrong.

Steve know that his face tightens reflexively at the condemnation, and across the way he can see Robin’s eyes widen in response. He can see her spine stiffen in that moment and knows, however her parents beat her down before he got here, their hold on her just ended.

“Hey!” She shouts, standing. “Mom, dad, this isn’t about Steve, it wasn’t even his idea. I wanted to go to New York because I want to be there. I want to be in a place that feels right and get to make music. Steve was just willing to come along with me when I asked. It’s not like that between us.”

“I bet it’s not.” Her father mutters.

“It’s not. I swear to you it’s not.” There’s something simultaneously desperate and deadly serious in Robin’s voice that makes her father pause and look at her for a long second before sighing, tension dropping out of him. Just like that Steve feels the energy in the room deflate. The obligatory protests from Robin’s parents have been weathered, the storm is past.

“Honey, I know you think that this is what you want, but there’s no way to be sure. You haven’t even seen the colleges you’re rejecting. How can you be sure that you won’t feel right there too?” Her mother says softly, dropping into one of the wicker chairs surrounding the table.

Suddenly Steve is struck by inspiration.

“What if we road tripped out to California? Saw some of the schools.” He says, trying to sound as trustworthy as possible.

“You want to take my daughter to visit colleges?” Mr. Buckley says, tone dripping with distain. Steve takes in a determined breath and squares his shoulders.

“I do. Look, Robin’s my best friend. I don’t ever want to be the reason that she doesn’t do something that will make her happy.” Steve tries to let the unspoken ‘and neither do you’ hang in the air. Robin senses the weakness building in her father and jumps on it.

“We’ve got plenty of money from the video store; we can stay in motels and stuff. We’ll go to California, see the schools, and if I love one we’ll come back here and I’ll send in my acceptance. If I don’t we can swing up to New York for a weekend and look at apartments. It’s perfect.” Robin’s mother sighs.

“There’s no talking you out of this one is there?”

“No, I really want to do this.” Robin says. And for the first time since she suggested it in the video store, Steve thinks that it might just be more than a dream, it might just work out.

The planning is a little tricky. It ends up being a winter break plan. Since they’re driving out west to California, Steve figures the weather shouldn’t be too problematic. He and Robin draw out their highway routes with a red marker in the book of maps that Steve’s parents make him keep in the glove compartment. As they both sit on the hood of his car drinking milkshakes, Robin holding the pen, Steve can’t help but notice how their planned route takes them through Indianapolis where the Byers clan has been staying.

As Robin’s hand goes, drawing a steady red line through a city that has been lingering in the back of Steve’s mind, he shoots her a quick glance to see if she’s thinking the same thing as him. She’s not. Robin has never had the same hang-ups about Jonathan Byers that Steve does. She doesn’t even notice.

As Robin keeps drawing out their route, pausing to take deep pulls of her chocolate milkshake Steve feels his mind wander somewhere else. It’s always the case when he lets himself think about Jonathan Byers. He’ll be doing one thing and then all he can see is an awkward slouch of shoulders as Nancy hands Jonathan the camera that Steve bought.

It’s a mix of memory and active sensation. All at once Steve feels a hand clamp onto his as Jonathan Byers drags him down a hall away from the monster, but the horror and terror is miles away. It’s entirely unlike the dreams that have him jerking out of bed, chest heaving and shirt soaked through with sweat. When he thinks about Jonathan Byers, there’s no fear just the feel of a hand.

Sometimes he also thinks about Jonathan and Nancy. He can see the look on Jonathan’s face as he gets the camera. It’s funny because his most often, recurring, thought is always, ‘he probably thinks that it was all Nancy’s idea’, and even in his brain it sounds petulant. It still rankles a little for reasons unknown that Jonathan thinks he’s a douchbag.

It’s especially odd because Steve knows conceptually that he should be furious with Jonathan Byers. There should be depths of conflict between them centered around the girl they both love, but he honestly can’t feel it. Sometimes he thinks about his dad or Lonnie Byers, and he knows that neither of them would have taken such an offense lying down. They would have hated the sight of Jonathan forever.

But when Steve thinks about the monster pinning Jonathan to the ground there is always a welling of rage and fear dep in his chest. He’s never swung a bat so hard. If he had to do it all again he would swing even harder.

Jonathan has saved his life, and he’s saved Jonathan’s twice over. If he’s supposed to hate the guy for also loving Nancy, he can’t find a way to do it. Loving Nancy seems like such an understandable crime. Jonathan doesn’t seem like the kind of person that would stay in love with someone’s girlfriend if he could help it. Even now Steve can’t help loving Nancy, it burns in his stomach like some sort of disease. If Steve can’t help but love Nancy how can he fault Jonathan for feeling the same.

As he and Robin map out their road trip with red pen and milkshakes, he doesn’t mention Jonathan Byers. It’ll only bother her and bring up the subject of Nancy, one of their most contentious. Robin hates the fact that he’s still hung up on Nancy Wheeler.

Once, when the two of them were listening to BeeGee’s and getting high in Steve’s car, he told her the whole sorry story about him, and Nancy, and Jonathan. Faded as hell, Robin had grabbed Steve’s face and declared that her first act as Steve’s best friend would be a vendetta against Nancy Wheeler until the end of time. He had spent twenty minutes begging her to let it go until they both got distracted by how the streetlights were shining through the windshield.

In fairness the fact that Nancy also had no idea who Robin was, despite sharing two classes with her over the course of two years at school, had only added to Robin’s irritation with the other girl. The rants were legendary and covered everything from Nancy’s prissy behavior at school to her self-righteousness. Steve suspected the real reason was something else, though.

It had only come up once, in that blurry twenty-minute period where Steve had desperately tried to convince Robin that Nancy wasn’t cruel or prissy and was so worth loving.

“Even if I weren’t mad about what she had done to you. I would still be mad about Barb.” She said.

“What! Nobody cared more about Barb than Nancy.” Steve had shot back. There was no one more intimately aware of how much Nancy loved Barb than Steve. She had left him over it after all.

“That girl dangled her best friend on a string and she knew it.”

“What do you mean?” Steve had asked, waiting for her to voice the truth that the whole school had quietly suspected with baited breath. But even after death some confessions are still sacrosanct, and Robin for all her idiosyncrasies is a deeply loyal friend.

“She and I used to talk under the bleachers sometimes. When Nancy ditched her to make out with you in your car. We were friends, that’s all. And it doesn’t matter what you say I’ll never, never, like Nancy Wheeler.” And that had been that.

It makes it a little easier to resist getting defensive when Robin spits out some barbed comment about Nancy after that, but there’s still no point in bringing it up if he doesn’t have to. It’s one of those things that they’ll just never agree on.

Despite the fact that they both feel slightly stronger about Nancy Wheeler than either of them really should, Steve knows that Robin doesn’t think twice about the red sharpie line through Indianapolis. Her cheerful ignorance makes it easier to put Jonathan Byers out of his head, and it probably wouldn’t have come up again if Dustin hadn’t swiped the maps in an effort to see if they were going to pass through Utah and near Suzie. (They weren’t).

Steve doesn’t realize that Dustin has gotten his grubby little mitts onto the maps until his doorbell rings and Dustin is standing outside with a box full of radio parts. He shoulders past Steve and into the empty house Steve suspects he views as an extension of his own.

“Hey, I checked your route, and I saw you’re going through Indianapolis.” Dustin says, pushing past Steve and setting the nerd box down on the kitchen counter. All of a sudden Steve has a sinking suspicion about what Dustin wants from him.

“So,” Dustin continues, “I have a box here of stuff for you to give to Will. He and El are having trouble with their end of the radio connection. There’s been some interference that keeps burning out their batteries super-fast. The party came up with a couple ideas to help, and we were going to tell Will, but you know tight money is for them. Since you’re driving by you can give them the stuff and we don’t have to make Will feel bad, or even worse angry.”

Steve eyes Dustin. The problem with Dustin is that he’s a genuinely nice person. He’s also presumptive and irritating. If it were only one or the other, life would be so much easier. The fact that he assumes Steve is totally going to do whatever he asks is galling, but his clear care for Will manages to create a fondness that outweighs Steve’s irritation by the barest edge. Then comes the confusion.

“Wait, how do you even know where we’re going? I didn’t even tell you shitheads that was going to be a trip. Wait, Max.” Dustin smiles his wide, slightly gummy smile at Steve.

“Max told us what was up, and I grabbed the maps you and Robin made out of the glove compartment when I went to put spare batteries in there at lunch last week.”

“Damn Henderson, that’s bold.” Steve says, eyeing the kid that somewhere along the way became his responsibility.

“Well who knows what you and Robin will get up to without me. The one time I let you two go off on your own you crash your car into a zombie. Maybe this time you’ll actually get together with her.” Dustin tuts, even as the twisting grin at the edge of his mouth gives him away.

“Okay, that’s a mischaracterization of what happened for sure. As I recall I saved Nancy, Jonathan, and a bunch of your dumb friends from getting murdered by Zombie Billy. And me and Robin is never going to happen.”

“You say po-tay-to, I say po-tah-to.” Dustin says. Steve finally lets out a laugh, ruffling Dustin’s hair.

“Alright Henderson, I guess with all that excellent evidence I can’t fault you for being a nosy little shit.” Steve pauses for a second, before biting the bullet. “I’ll give Will the box. And I guess tell your gross friends that if they have any other deliveries to let me know.” Dustin glances at Steve and seems to understand what he really means.

“Mike probably won’t have anything for you because he’s planning on spending Christmas with the Byers clan anyway, but I’ll ask around anyway.” Steve nods.

“If there’s any other stops that you shitheads want us to make on the way you may suggest them as long as we don’t have to go anywhere off track. Since you know the route and everything Henderson, I expect you to take care of it. Berkley then New York, then back.”

“Shit Steve. What do you think I did, memorize your shitty itinerary?”

“No, I think you copied it onto a map of your own so that you could obsessively calculate where we were based on the local traffic reports that I’m sure you will somehow get your hands on.” Dustin is oddly quiet after Steve says this, and for a moment Steve is worried he mis-stepped. He had said it in a joking way, but it might have been a little close to the mark. They all have different ways of coping with the horrors Hawkins has forced them to witness.

Sometimes when the creaking floorboards in the empty house get to be too much, Steve drives out to the junkyard and sits on the hood of his car, flipping his bat from hand to hand. When he's given up on sleep he'll go down to the basement and turn on all the lights and put on music as loud as it will go. Sometimes the lamp next to his bed will flicker and he’s out of the house like there’s a demogorgon on his tail.

It’s not so bad when his parents are home. The general signs of their presence make it seem as though the monsters are far away. After all they missed the monsters the first three times, their presence feels like it might just ward off a fourth.

Steve knows that Robin sometimes thumbs through her Russian to English dictionary. The flickering lights bother her less, and, though the last monster was objectively horrifying, there’s less terror for her there. The monster was too quick and too utterly unreal to be something that scarred her forever.

She isn’t even bothered by the flicker in the neon lights on Main Street. She smiles when it’s Santa season, whereas Steve can’t look at Christmas lights without feeling something tightening in his chest. But for Robin unlike the rest, the flickering lights aren’t the sign of a lost child or an oncoming monster, just a faulty socket.

Instead of the lights, it’s the labyrinthine underground that sticks in Robin’s mind. She has trouble with elevators as the tiny space covered in stainless steel takes her right back below the ground. Steve also has the sneaking suspicion that if he went to the doctors the needles would really get to him, but it’s a theory that he hasn’t tested yet.

Dustin on the other hand, follows the daily routines of his friends with a strange obsession, always wanting to know which radio they’re in range of. He plants spare batteries everywhere he can think to, and rags on the friends who deviate from their stated schedules with a manic kind of desperation disguised as mockery.

It’s far from the strangest thing that any of them do, but Steve feels bad for calling it out anyway.

“Hey man,” He starts, gearing up for an apology before Dustin interrupts.

“You are one hundred percent correct Steve. I will be tracking you, and if you get lost you’re not going to be able to lie to me about it, because I know all, and I am going to make, so, so much fun of you.” Dustin is joking at Steve’s expense, but there’s still something tight behind his eyes from being called out. Steve lets it go and moves on.

“You are such a nerd Henderson.” As insults go, not very deep, but it does enough to restore the normalcy between them that the tension goes out of the air and they both relax a little.

“Hey, just so you know,” Dustin says as he goes for the door, “The Party’s throwing you a shindig before you go. Cake and everything, but we were wondering if we could do it here. You know how it is if we do it at our places. We’d have to keep the monstrous cat in the box and it’s just a damper because then we can’t really explain why we like you.” Steve sighs, bemused.

“Fine. Tell me when you guys have a date and time and all that stuff.” Dustin cheers the minute he finishes talking.

“For sure Steve! I’ll have it set up by tomorrow afternoon when you take us to the arcade.” Dustin says as he hops onto his bike.

“Wait…” Steve says, but Dustin is already pulling away from the house. Steve sighs and resigns himself to being more taken advantage of than usual as the kids try and pretend that him leaving doesn’t really bother them.

The fact that Dustin even looked at the route that Steve and Robin are planning is sign enough that the trip worries him, and Steve suspects that the rest of the shitheads are also bothered. He lets them rent horror movies without comment and drives them around whenever they beg a little. Even if they don’t particularly like him, they’ll at least miss him for the services that he provides.

Framed in the way that Dustin put it, as a favor for Will, Robin has no issues with stopping at the Byers house. He tells her about the box, invites her to the party, and doesn’t let the name Jonathan pass through his lips. She doesn’t notice, simply asks what she needs to bring to the party and doesn’t say a word more about Indianapolis.

It’s relatively easy to organize the event, mostly because Steve is responsible for very little organizing. Other than providing the venue and inviting Robin, Steve is in charge of nothing. Dustin brings food, Lucas brings cake, Max brings sodas, and they play monopoly as they wait for Mike with the cheese plate. He doesn’t even question how they’re all getting to his house.

This means Steve is entirely blindsided when he opens his front door expecting to see Mike on with his bike and is greeted instead by the sight of Nancy Wheeler standing next to her little brother.

Mike shoots Steve a look torn between commiseration, apology, and the ingrained derision that is inherent to Mike’s expression when he interacts with anyone that isn’t Eleven or Will. With a somewhat halfhearted hello Mike pushes past Steve into his house with the cheese plate, manfully fleeing whatever situation is developing at the door. Steve can’t even be mad. If he could flee too, he would.

Since that moment when Nancy had forced out the beginnings of an extremely belated dumping and Steve had cut her off, she had done an excellent job of avoiding him. The aftermath of the zombie debacle had honestly been the most that the two of them had talked since and considering Steve had been wrapped in a shock blanket at the time it wasn’t really that impressive.

Now though, the expression on Nancy’s face is determined and pointed at Steve. He knows that Robin finds Nancy annoyingly prissy, but Steve knows better. When Nancy points that expression at something, the rest of the world better get out of her way. He knows that for a fact; he tried to stop her once.

“Steve, I want to go with you and Robin to Indianapolis.” The words Nancy uses seem to indicate a request, but her tone is nothing short of a statement. She continues before he can respond, “It’s only a six hour dive out there, so I won’t interrupt your romantic trip or whatever, and I know you’re stopping at the Byers house, Mike told me. I refuse to spend Christmas watching my little brother swoon at Eleven while I don’t even get to see my boyfriend.”

“Robin and me aren’t like that.” Steve says, a little dumbstruck, and a little irritated. He always feels a little dumbstruck by Nancy. The overwhelming feeling used to be kind of nice. It used to be a reaction as he basked in her presence, letting her determination and brilliance wash over him. Now it’s frustrating because Nancy doesn’t want him around, and then steamrolls him because she’s used to him being a taxi service for her brother.

“Oh, well then there’s even less of a reason not to take me.” Nancy shoots back quickly, but his reply has actually thrown her a little off balance. Suddenly Steve is struck by the realization that Nancy is nervous that he’s still pining. She’s moved on with Jonathan, and she thought he had done the same with Robin. She doesn’t mean to rub it in his face; she genuinely doesn’t want him to feel bad.

All of a sudden Steve feels a little ashamed and the irritation leaks out of him. Nancy Wheeler isn’t mean, she isn’t prissy, and she isn’t trying to hurt him. She’s in love with Jonathan Byers, and when Nancy loves something she fights for it with every fiber of her body. It sucks that she never fought for him in the same way, but that’s not something she can be blamed for. She didn’t love him. And that’s really all there is to it.

Nancy seems tense now, awkward in a way that she’s not used to being, and Steve is suddenly afraid that she’s seen a little more than he would like her to. He lets himself sigh and aims for dopey.

“You can come I guess. If it’s only six hours. I just don’t want Robin to get the wrong idea.” Steve says, ruffling his hair with one hand and hoping with all his might that Nancy will be less perceptive than usual for once in her life.

Nancy looks caught between several emotions, and Steve can only guess at what they are. He sees a lot of amusement, but also a bit of something that might be disappointment, maybe disgust. It’s hard to say, but that little hint of whatever it is makes something drop in Steve’s stomach.

There’s something shitty about people thinking he’s in love with Robin. It makes Steve feel a little ill, and bad. When people think about him and Robin, Steve feels as though he’s fallen back into being the person he was before Nancy and Byers and monsters turned him into something tolerable. He feels like a person who takes advantage of people. He doesn’t like it.

It also bothers him that Nancy might think he’s a bad influence. She picked him twice, and even if she was in love with Byers in the end, once upon a time she picked him. He doesn’t like the thought that she might have come to regret that.

Nancy quickly schools her face into entirely the cheerful amusement a millisecond later, but they both know Steve saw that split-second expression, whatever it was.

“Well…” Nancy says, voice trailing off.

“You coming inside?” Steve asks, as upbeat as he can make it. He hopes she says no.

“Nah.” Nancy responds. “Mom drove me and Mike here, and she’s waiting around the corner.”

Steve isn’t sure if she’s lying or not, and honestly at this point he doesn’t care. He gives her an over-bright smile and catches the slight wince behind the eyes. It’s odd, he’s so used to Nancy being sure of herself that it always catches him by surprise when she’s awkward about things.

Nancy turns and makes her way down the driveway, and Steve closes the door.

“Well that was horrifying.” Comes the dry tone of Robin from behind him in the hall. Steve doesn’t even turn to look at her, simply letting his head fall forward onto the closed door with a thunk.

“Nancy Wheeler thinks I am a bad influence on you.” Steve says with a groan. “She thinks I’m in love with you and am pulling you away from opportunities to satisfy my own desires.” He turns to look at Robin desperately, waiting for her to tell him he’s wrong.

“Well…she didn’t, say, that.” Robin says, obliging him. Her tone makes it clear that she doubts Nancy’s restraint means all that much.

“It’s only six hours in a car with her. She won’t be too judgy.” Steve says to Robin, trying to sound optimistic.

“Sure.” Robin’s drawl is clear on what she thinks the likelihood of that is. Steve sighs and lets it go, walking past her toward the living room where it sounds as though Max is crowing in victory.

The party ends up being good, despite the somewhat odd start with Nancy Wheeler. The kids finish out the game of monopoly with Max as the clear champion and then settle in to watch Star Wars again. They talk the whole way through, theorizing over Darth Vader and if he was aware of the whole Luke and Leia situation or just of Luke.

Robin and Steve mostly listen and drink beer. Sometimes Robin will throw in a theory, or Steve will chime in with something off topic and the whole room will groan and boo simultaneously. It’s nice.

The party wraps up easily. Lucas’s parents pick him up, and Mike goes home with Dustin, the two still arguing over the relationship between Darth Vader and Leia. As soon as Dustin and Mike are out the door, Max ducks into the hall and comes back with a box that she must have hidden in the coat room.

She puts the box on the coffee table and sits cross-legged on the floor behind it looking nervously at her hands. Steve exchanges a look with Robin and the two of them sit on the couch across from her.

“What’s up Max.” Steve says. He keeps it light, seeing the way that her fingers are tapping on the cardboard.

“My dad threw out Billy’s stuff.” Max says quietly. She bites her lip and Steve knows that he’s going to have to tread carefully here. He doesn’t like Billy Hargrove. He didn’t like Billy Hargrove even when the racist shithead wasn’t a zombie. The little bits that Max shares about him tend to be redeeming things but Steve knows better than to let himself buy in. He knows who Billy is.

Steve knows that Billy was abused and that his mother left him behind when she fled. Steve knows that Billy got the shit kicked out of him by his racist dad for having diverse friends in LA, which was why he was so pissed about Max and Lucas.

Steve also knows that Billy Hargrove beat the shit out of him and wanted to see him die. He knows that Billy would have happily hit Lucas with his car and only delighted in the fact that someone else was lying bleeding on the ground for once. He saved Eleven, and apologized to Max in the end, but it doesn’t make Steve like him any better.

Billy Hargrove may not have wanted to hurt people because a monster said so, but Billy Hargrove sure didn’t mind hurting people when it was his own idea.

Robin cuts in before Steve can think of how to articulate any of that.

“I’m sure that must have been hard.” She says. Robin manages to take a tone that isn’t saccharine or condescending when she says it. Instead she sounds oddly mystical and a little far away. Max looks up.

“This is the important stuff I managed to save. He used to say that if dad ever killed him, he wanted this stuff to go to his friends in LA. Dustin said we couldn’t go off route with our requests, but this one’s important. I know you’re only going to Berkley, but it’s only a day’s drive down to LA and it could even be fun. You could see the beaches and stuff. It would only be a little effort to give this stuff to Billy’s ex-girlfriend and she could distribute it. Her name was Matilda. I have her address and everything.”

“If you have the address, why can’t you just mail it?” Steve asks, trying to keep his tone from being too wooden.

“She doesn’t know he’s dead. I didn’t want to tell her that over the mail. When I heard you were going to California I thought that maybe you could take it there and tell her. If you can’t do it, just come back and I’ll mail it with a letter.” There’s a long silence that falls after Max is done speaking. Steve isn’t sure how to respond but before he can Max darts across the space between them and gives him a tight hug.

“I’m really sorry Billy almost killed you, but he was getting better before he died, I think. I know you like Dustin best because he likes you, but don’t think the rest of us don’t like you too. We’re really going to miss you Steve.” As soon as she’s done talking, Max rebounds away from him and towards the door as if shot out of a canon.

As she makes for the door, scrubbing a sleeve over her eyes Steve calls, “Max are you sure you don’t need a ride home?”

“Nah. I’ve got my board. Bye Steve, Bye Robin.” And the door slams behind her, leaving the box in the middle of his coffee table, and Robin staring at him wide eyed.

“Are you going to bring it?” She asks quietly.

“I don’t know.” Steve says tightly, staring at the box. “That asshole almost killed me. He would have killed me and been happy about it if Max hadn’t stepped in.”

“Yeah, but now he’s dead and you’re not.”

“Yeah.”

“I wouldn’t mind stopping in LA. The City of Angels could be fun.”

“Could be.”

“On the other hand, you’re really not obligated to bring it, and it might lead to some heavy shit.”

“Yeah.

When they load up the car two days later, Max’s box is sitting in the backseat.

Chapter Text

When Steve pulls the car up in front of Robin’s house she’s standing in front of the door, duffel bag by her feet and arms crossed. It’s early in the morning and wisps of shredded mist cool the air. It truly feels like winter.

Robin looks cold where she’s standing. She’s in a large red knit sweater and a long black skirt that swishes around her legs when she shifts her weight from one foot to the other. Despite all that her expression is bright when she sees Steve.

“Hey there fancy lady, you look kinda cold.” Steve calls out of the car as he puts his BMW in park. Robin grins at him as he gets out and then pulls him into a tight hug. She fits perfectly in his arms, and he tucks his chin on the top of her head, letting her messy bun tickle the tip of his nose.

Hawkins has been horrible, and on so many nights Steve wakes up cold and sweating, reliving the terrors of nights long passed. Still, it feels like an equal price for getting to have Robin in his life. He feels a little traitorous thinking about it sometimes. So many people in the town went through so much, but Steve still thinks he’d do it again to get to Robin, other people be damned. He tries to feel bad about it sometimes and just can’t.

“Hi.” Robin says into his chest, clearly trying to absorb as much of his body heat as she can.

“No parents to see you off?” Steve asks into her hair.

“Nah,” She says “We did all our goodbyes last night.”

“Alright then. You ready to go?” Steve asks, pulling away from Robin to grab her duffel bag off the sidewalk.

“Yep. Did you get the coffee and doughnuts?”

“We’re all set for breakfast. All that’s left is to pick up Nancy and then we’re out.” Steve says, and Robin responds with a predictable groan.

“Are you sure we can’t just leave her?” She says. Steve would get irritated, but Robin looks so rumpled and adorably grumpy that he can’t help but grin. She so rarely let’s go of her aloof exterior or bright happiness. Seeing her grumpy is so out of character that it makes him laugh.

“Be nice Rob.” Steve says with a grin across the top of his car. She smiles back at him.

“I will be. Don’t worry so much Hair Boy. I won’t embarrass you.” Robin says with a grin. Steve rolls his eyes as they both get into the car. Robin is in a much better mood than she usually is about Nancy. The grin lasts even as he pulls up to the Wheeler house to see Nancy standing outside, small knapsack in hand.

She’s dressed for the road trip, and it actually makes Steve’s stomach twist a little. Nancy in the tight striped long-sleeved shirt tucked into high waisted jeans looks so much like the sweet, brown-eyed girl he asked out for shakes back when the world was simple. Her hair is the only thing that gives away the game. Cut short and severe, it matches the grim-faced reporter that Steve has seen around town in the few times the two of them ran into each other post-summer-monster.

Nancy dives toward their car before Steve has even shifted the gears into park. It’s not quite a full out run, but the carefully constrained speed she musters anyway speaks to a certain type of desperation. There’s a high flush on her cheeks that Steve would normally attribute to the cold, but he now thinks that might be due to a typical Wheeler conflict.

He pops the trunk even as he swings himself out of the car.

“You alright?” He calls as Nancy heaves her bag into the boot.

“My mom is being a crazy person, and my dumbshit brother is making everything astronomically worse. Get us out of here before Mike tries to stow away or my mom tries to lock me in the house somehow.” Nancy huffs out, slamming the trunk closed. Steve quickly gets himself back in the driver seat before Nancy can think hijack the car for herself.

There’s a beat as both of them fasten their seat-belts, and Steve looks up to see Robin offering Nancy the doughnut bag that had been tucked by her feet.

“Want a doughnut hole? Steve and I only coordinated flavors with each other, but we got a few extra for you. It’s hard to go wrong with a little chocolate covered deep-fried-dough as a problem solver.” She gives Nancy a tentative smile, and Steve feels a deep affection welling in his chest.

By everything that is holy, he fucking loves Robin.

“Thanks.” Nancy says with a small smile back. She reaches out and plucks one of the doughnut holes out of the bag with a look of deep focus, her delicate fingers selecting the perfect one for her. Steve has to look away, his heart simply cannot handle the intensity of the cuteness that is Nancy Wheeler.

He lets himself look at Robin instead. He gives his best friend a grin that earns him a tiny eyeroll as Robin hides her face behind her coffee in a Styrofoam cup by taking a long pull. Steve indulges in his own eyeroll before doing the same. The shitty early morning dark roast is tempered by a metric fuckton of cream and sugar. It makes his teeth hurt a little bit, but it wakes him up.

It’s easy to slide Roadtrip Mix 1 into the tape deck. Robin was responsible for the odd numbers, and Steve trusts that she’ll get the trip started with a bang. Nancy startles a little as the dulcet tones of Queen come roaring through the speakers, but Steve just grins and puts the car into reverse, pulling out of the Wheeler’s driveway.

No one says much as they pull out of Hawkins. Even though the town is covered in a layer of swirling fog, there’s nothing particularly haunted about it. The sunlight streams through the mist, making it seem as though everything has been painted by a kaleidoscope of light. It even transforms the woods that Steve thought he would hate for the rest of his life into something that looks fantastical rather than imperiled.

The mood for the drive starts high because of it. They have to drive by the old labs in order to get onto the highway, and while the strange lightness in the air doesn’t quite manage to make the labs less threatening, Steve’s stomach doesn’t cramp and twist into knots either.

Honestly the drive is easier than Steve is expecting. Robin’s peace offering doughnut makes sure the tension between her and Nancy is mitigated, and, as Nancy was honestly unaware of who Robin is as a person beyond the fact that she was in the loop on the monsters and friends with Steve, she makes no effort to break the truce.

The only hard part for Steve comes from stopping himself from looking at Nancy whenever he glances in the rearview mirror. After locking eyes with her once Steve keeps his eyes on the road in front of him. That makes it easier to ignore the fact that for the first time since they broke up, Nancy is willingly spending time in his presence.

Eventually the slight itch under his skin at the thought of touching Nancy’s subsides, and Steve feels himself relaxing into the monotonous rhythm of driving, occasionally reaching down to take a long pull of his coffee or bob his head along to a well selected song on the mixtape. He half pays attention when Robin asks Nancy about her favorite doughnut places in Hawkins. It’s nice.

The ride carries on until Steve can feel a slight tightness in his gut.

“Anyone else up for a rest stop?” He asks.

“I could use another snack.” Robin says with a grin, and Nancy nods along.

“Yeah I could use a bottle of water, though doughnuts made me kind of thirsty.”

“Great.” Steve says, tapping his blinker. His question was well coordinated with the signs for a roadside stop. Steve pats himself on the back for his timing.

It’s not one of the larger stops that have up to three chain restaurants and bathrooms that look as though they were intended for stadiums. Instead all there is a Seven Eleven and a gas station, which looks as though it has seen better days. Steve grins at Robin as they get out of the car, her eyes are fixed on the Seven Eleven.

“Get me a Cherry Slurpee?” He asks her with a grin.

“Sure.” She says, giving him a distracted smile over her shoulder. “To get pretzels or not to get pretzels that is the question…”

“I vote pretzels.” Nancy says wryly. Her eyes flick back and forth between the two of them, and all of a sudden Steve feels a little exposed. Nancy has the mind of a steel trap and she misses nothing. Even more concerningly, she lets nothing go once she’s focused on it. All too abruptly, Steve is reminded of that odd little emotion that had crossed her face when Nancy heard about him and Robin going on this trip.

There’s something terrifying about being known, if only because it invites the horrible possibility of being less than someone once thought you were. Steve has already been found wanting by Nancy and the thought of it hurt so much he didn’t even let her finish the final words that would make their split reality.

Robin is something so special to him. Their relationship makes Steve want to believe in soulmates. She’s funny and bright, and she seems determined to grip as tight onto him as he wants to grip onto her. When the self-doubt takes one of its very rare hiatuses Steve can almost see what Robin sees in him.

She was just as lost as he was, and there’s something deeply affirming about finally being able to offer something to someone else and have them be made better for it. Sometimes in the quiet moments when they listen to old disco music from Steve’s mom’s collection in his big empty house, Robin will look at Steve like he’s lighting up her world, and he knows in his bones that for the first time someone likes him as much as he likes them.

The way that Nancy is looking at the two of them right now makes him a little uncomfortable about it though. One of things about Nancy that he loves best is the fact that she always seems to be able to peer down into the core of him. Now he wonders what she sees when she looks at him and Robin. He wonders if she would tell him if he asked. It’s not his privilege to know what Nancy thinks anymore, but he can’t help wanting to know. He wants to hear what she thinks about him, his car, the weather on the drive down. He just wants to listen to her speak.

It’s uncomfortable holding all these contradictions inside him all at once. It feels like spinach in his teeth.

“I’m gonna,” He gestures toward the bathroom with his thumb, and then turns to go, shouting over his shoulder to Robin “I’m also in on the pretzels if you get them.”

If he had turned toward her a second slower he would have missed the narrowing of Robin’s eyes on Nancy, the flattening of the mouth that speaks to the distaste behind her carefully rumpled presentation. People miss that about Robin; they don’t see how much the exposed individuality hides the individual. Steve knows he should remind her to keep that shit inside—they’re trying to be Nancy friendly this trip—but discretion is the better part of valor and he lets it spur his feet toward the bathroom instead.

If he takes his time in that dingy dark space, it’s no one’s business but his own. He drags his feet a little and washes his hands a couple times. Finally, he shakes them dry and stares at his own face in the mirror.

“Get a grip Harrington.” He hisses at himself. “Stop buying the bullshit.” He gives himself a gentle wake up slap in the face for good measure, and then runs his hands through his hair before moving to the door.

The tiny bathroom is tucked on the side of the building, and it means that Steve hears the tight voices of Nancy and Robin before he sees them. They’re clearly trying not to make a scene, but it doesn’t stop their voices from carrying.

“That’s not what—”

“Stop denying it.”

“I’m not denying anything, that’s not what happened.” It’s Nancy’s voice there.

“I don’t care about what you think happened. I care about Steve, and he’s never going to ask you about what the hell happened, because the last time he ever tried to ask what was wrong you stomped his heart into itty bitty pieces.” Robin sounds irritated but not irrational. Steve wonders how they even got on this subject. He thinks it would be better if he walked out there now but his feet are glued to the ground.

“Why are you even talking to me about this. It’s between me and Steve.”

“Oh yeah, I can really see the progress being made. It’s not just him you know. You keep staring at him like you have something to say but then he looks back and you get all weird.”

“Jealous?” Nancy spits, and it reminds Steve of a pinched expression and messy hair over a toilet. He can hear the echoing sound of Nancy snarling the word bullshit at him, and his chest gets tight. He doesn’t want to be hearing this, but he just can’t seem to make his feet move.

Robin is stronger than Steve though, and he can hear the genuine hilarity she feels when she throws back her head and laughs.

“Me and Steve will be solid until the sun falls out of the sky, I don’t give a shit about you and him. It just kills me to see him still killing himself over the fact that you got drunk and made him feel worthless, so if could just apologize that would be great.” There’s a deep confidence underneath what Robin is saying that Steve just doesn’t feel. His gut is in freefall and he desperately wants to flee but also to stay and see how this is going to end.

“I’m not sorry though.” Nancy snaps, and Steve’s heart goes crashing down to his toes.

“I’m not.” She says again, softer this time, and there’s something aching in her voice.

“Jonathan gets me. He just looks at me and gets me, and even when he doesn’t or can’t, he just accepts it and moves on. How everything is now is better. I’m not sorry that I fucked it all up because me and Steve are both better for it. I hate how I did everything; I hate how it all happened, but I can’t apologize. I won’t lie to him anymore.” There’s a long silence after she finishes talking.

“You won’t lie to him.” Robin says. It’s not quite a statement or a question. Something in-between that’s just a little tainted with disbelief. You would have to know Robin to catch it though.

“You weren’t there after the first time everything went down, after Will went missing, but it was horrible.” Nancy says softly. Whatever she’s seeing on Robin’s face is putting her a little more at ease, and Steve can almost see the mystical slightly distant expression that used to make teenagers confess their worst crimes to Robin at the ice cream counter.

“The entire world had changed. Everything I thought was one way turned out to be something else, and it felt like I was drowning. When I was sad, Steve played music and danced with me, and when I was tired he baked me cupcakes and took me for milkshakes, and it just made everything so much worse because he was trying so hard. So, I tried to be happy and have everything be all right. Tried to make everything the same as before, as if nothing happened. It turned into this giant lie. He couldn’t see me, or it, and I was so angry—furious—and distraught, that I didn’t realize I was the only one pretending.”

“He thinks he wasn’t enough.” Robin says, and her tone is almost gentle.

“He wasn’t enough.” Nancy replies. Her voice is wet, and Steve realizes with a jolt that she must be crying.

“No one was enough,” She continues. “It was never about enough. It was about the fact that I loved him in a world without monsters, and neither of us knew how to love each other in a world with them.” The words feel right as she says them, and even though Steve still feels a little trampled, some of the sick feeling in his gut goes away. It’s like the sun coming out for the first time after a long winter while the cold still clings in your bones. He thinks that he just might have been feeling this way since he gave Nancy the out all those months ago in the Byers house. That he’s been feeling sick since she smiled beatifically and walked away.

It’s easy to round the corner towards them in light of that. His eyes lock with Nancy’s the second he does. There is a beat as a moment of understanding passes between them. She knows he has heard. He knows that she knows. They are both all right. He gives her a rueful grin, and she gives him one back. It’s tentative but real.

“Did you guys get pretzels?” Steve asks, turning toward Robin and breaking his stare with Nancy.

There’s a small pause after his words. Robin gives him a long considering look, before grinning at him, bright and genuine. She knows what it is to hide better than he does, and she knows the awful punishment of it. Steve’s not going to begrudge her this little bit of dragging into the light and she knows it.

“Yeah, got a funsize bag. We can put them in the center console. You and Nancy can share, you weird pretzel people.” Steve laughs.

The three of them turn to go back to the car, Steve walking in the middle, Nancy on his right, Robin on his left. There’s still a sheen over Nancy’s eyes, and they’re rimmed a little red, but when he looks at her she gives him a small smile. She’ll be just fine.

Robin pulls ahead of the two of them and gives Steve a look as she climbs into her seat, shutting the door behind her with an authoritative thud. Steve pauses for a moment, wondering what to say, when Nancy bails him out.

“She’s got a knack for making stuff happen doesn’t she.” Nancy says. Steve can’t help the bright smile that comes to his face.

“Yeah. She’s great that way. Robin’s got this magic thing for knowing when something’s important enough to push.”

“I guess.” Nancy responds quietly. And Steve can feel his hackles rising in Robin’s defense.

“Look she was just trying to help, and I’m not going to lie, I’m glad I heard what I did.” Steve says. Nancy nods in response to him, and she looks wearied down to her bones as she does. It makes the rising irritation slide away again.

Nancy looks gutted and sad. All of a sudden Steve is reminded that he’s not the only one this was hard for.

“I just…” Nancy starts, then stops.

“You what?” Steve prompts gently after she lets the silence trail.

“I wish I could have told it to you.” Nancy says. “I still don’t think I can look at you and say what went wrong. I just feel sick.”

Steve wants to step forward and wrap her up in his arms, but he can’t. It’s not his place anymore for one thing; for another, he’s honestly not sure that it would help.

“I don’t think I could either. You hurt me really bad Nance, but it’s not like you fed me to a demogorgan. I’m—I’ve got Robin, and she’s got me. It’s okay that we couldn’t talk to each other. Because you talked to her, and I heard it. I think that’s enough for now Nance. It’s okay.”

As he talks Steve’s hands flex on his thighs and needing something to do with them he stuffs them in his pockets. He feels awkward and slightly dumb. The words tumbling out of his mouth seem stilted to his own ears, so he can’t even imagine how they sound to Nancy.

He doesn’t recall feeling this way much in the Before Nancy Era. He doesn’t remember feeling this way while they were dating either. It makes him want to bail out of the situation as fast as he can, but Nancy looks up and him with those shiny red eyes and then steps into him. Wrapping her arms around his middle and squeezing tight.

It feels as though she fits there; as though when the world was making people it decided that Nancy Wheeler would be the perfect person for Steve Harrington to have in his arms. Her slender torso and the flooph of her hair are the perfect size for him to surround. He wraps her up as tight as he can, and he can feel in his bones that this is the last time this hug will happen, the last time it will feel this way. So he holds on to Nancy Wheeler and makes the most of it.

Eventually the two of them separate. Nancy wipes her nose with a sniffle. Steve can feel a little patch of wet on his tee-shirt that he just knows is snot. He scrubs a hand over his face and then through his hair. Nancy gives him a somewhat watery smile, and then without saying another word gets into the car. Steve stands stock still.

It’s slightly above freezing here in this parking lot for all that it’s sunny out. His breath makes little clouds of mist in the air. He lets the icy feel of it envelop him. He breathes in and out and his body is flooded with something cool. Steve lets the warmth of Nancy in his arms drift away. He breathes in and then out again.

Steve gets into the car.

Robin gives him a sidelong glance, and he gives her a wan grin in return. Nancy is leaning against the backseat window with her eyes closed. Steve pulls back onto the highway and lets the dulcet strains of Robin’s favorite melodies color the miles and miles of endless concrete.

The rest of the drive to the Byers house goes quietly. Steve chews on the straw of his slushie whenever he takes a pull, and finally Robin smacks his arm when she notices. It settles something inside of his chest. No matter what happens, he and Robin are good, things between them are easy.

The new house where the Byers clan is staying is much nicer than their old one. It’s not just the fact that their old house had been near demolished by wave of monsters after monstrous wave, but the old house had been…the only word that Steve can think of is rickety.

The new house would be the perfect picture of suburbia if it weren’t in the middle of a rust belt city. The wooden slats are all painted pristine white, and the door is light blue. Every window has matching trim. Steve is pretty certain that Joyce had gotten a nice payout from the government in the wake of Hopper’s death. He remembers Eleven bursting into an arcade session yelling about it before she collapsed into the joint embrace of Max and Mike.

It had taken her a while to calm down, and when she did Steve had quietly voiced his own opinion, that it was exactly as though the state was paying Joyce the regular federal support that she would have received if El had been a normal foster kid. The idea had made the abused teen’s face go contemplative rather than miserable, so in the moment Steve had counted it as a win.

He's still a little surprised to see the house in front of him that he does. Joyce has always seemed so cool and utterly individual, but this place reminds him of the barbie houses he used to see Holly play with when he went over to Nancy’s. He thinks a little uncomfortably about the nail bat tucked behind all the duffel bags in his trunk.

When he’d picked it up off the ground in the old Byers house the bat had felt right in his hands. It whistled through the air, practically singing when he swung from the shoulder. Back when he and Jonathan were nine and eight respectively, they had been on the same little league team. Steve doesn’t remember much about Jonathan then except that Jonathan had always played far better when his dad didn’t come to the games.

When Steve picks up that bat from the Byers floor to fight a screaming monster it’s like those summer days of learning are right there at his fingertips. The coaches had always said he’d had a home run swing. Jonathan said the same thing when he patted Steve on the shoulder and told him to keep the old thing. That bat had been a piece of the Byers house; a piece of Jonathan that he gave to Steve with a grin and the shared secret of summer days. He can’t imagine it existing here in this Polly-Pocket day dream.

Nancy is moving up toward the door with her bag as though she’d done it a thousand times. Steve feels nervous at the prospect of seeing everyone in that house, and he can’t help but think of his and Robin’s original plan that had them driving through this city without stopping, leaving the prospect of Jonathan Byers an unspoken one. Looking at Nancy’s back stirs a memory of her flashcards. Schrodinger’s Jonathan; neither glad to see Steve nor mad to see Steve, maybe both.

He can’t tell if it’s relief or disappointment when Mrs. Byers opens the door.

“Nancy!” She says with a wide smile. “I’m so glad you got here safe. You’re earlier than I thought you would be.” She glances back to where Steve is standing with his arm slung across Robin’s shoulders and gives them both a grin.

“Thank you guys so much for driving Nancy here. My son’s been so excited, he’s been over the moon since he heard you were all coming.”

“No problem Mrs. Byers” Steve says, giving her a little half smile.

“Come in, come it!” She says, stepping away from the door. There’s a quick moment of hesitation as Steve and Robin furtively exchange a quick look. This isn’t in the road trip plans, but to be honest the idea of eating home cooked food instead of trying to scrounge up stuff along the highway is appealing.

As soon as they walk through the door Steve sees Jonathan.

He’s staring at Nancy and there’s an actual wide smile across his face. It almost takes Steve’s breath away. He’s so used to thinking of Jonathan of being dour that the sight of him beaming is honestly stunning.

Jonathan cuts across the room towards Nancy and pulls her in tight. It’s an entirely different kind of embrace than the one that Steve and Nancy had shared. That earlier hug in the road stop parking lot had been fueled by desperation. The two of them had clung tight to each other trying to figure out how to make up for the things they didn’t say.

The embrace in front of him is something else; it is entirely relief. Jonathan is shorter and more slender than Steve is. The hug that he and Nancy engage in is far more evenly matched. He doesn’t subsume her in his arms, rather they look like two halves of a whole.

There’s a moment of dissociation for Steve. He should be jealous, logically he should be jealous. But he’s just not.

They look so good together. Their dark heads curve together, and Steve can practically feel the sigh of relief that goes through both of them. It’s lovely to watch. Robin leans into his side and its nice. There’s no jealousy in his chest but there is something that aches. Maybe nostalgia, or something like regret. Steve’s gotten so much better than he used to be and watching this hug makes him conscious of that. He used to torment Jonathan, and he lost Nancy. He wishes he could offer them a hug that would give either of them any sort of that same relief.

Still Robin is leaning into his side, and it’s good to remember that he is someone’s person, even after everything.

Once Jonathan pulls away from Nancy his eyes light on Steve and Robin where they’re tucked together. He grins tentatively when he sees Steve.

“Hey Steve, how’ve you been?” The two of them had come to a certain kind of truce after the third go around of monsters. While Joyce finalized the move for Jonathan’s senior year, the two of them had ended up hanging out on the occasions when Nancy couldn’t get away from her family.

The two of them had gotten milkshakes from the diner a couple times and sat talking and listening to tapes in Steve’s car. It felt more like neutral ground than either of their houses. Steve grins back at Jonathan and give him a bit of an awkward wave. It’s good to see the guy. There’s something about Jonathan that has always made Steve feel overexposed and a little manic. When Jonathan’s around he just wants to move, or shout, or fight. He just feels brighter. He grips Robin a little tighter at his side.

It’s always amused him how much alike Robin and Jonathan are. They’re both artists, only instead of photography for Robin it’s music. The two of them are strange and smart, looking in at the world and seeing it from a new perspective. They don’t make Steve feel the same way though. With Robin there’s no need to perform. He doesn’t have to be anything other than who he is.

“Hey dude,” He offers weakly when no one says anything in Jonathan’s wake, “your mom let us in.” It’s so pathetic that Steve can practically feel Robin rolling her eyes from where she stands next to him. Then like the greatest Dues ex Machina of all time, they are saved by the power of the younger sibling.

“Steve!” Will says brightly from the hall behind Jonathan, as he comes walking in. He doesn’t look twice at Nancy or Jonathan, simply swans passed them to join into the quick one-armed hug that Steve had known was coming. Surprisingly though, Will wraps his arms around Steve’s middle in a full-fledged embrace. Steve loves giving hugs so he squeezes Will tight with a light laugh.

Liking Steve had become an act of rebellion for Will after his mother declared her desire to move. Steve drove the pack of kids wherever they wanted to go, but Will had decided that Steve was his own personal chauffer to the arcade whenever he wanted to stick it to his mom that he wasn’t going helping her out and everyone else was occupied with their own nighttime activities.

No one was comfortable with Will going around Hawkins on his own in the Byers clan. There was no doubt that Jonathan would have gone with him, but Steve knew that Will both hated putting his older brother out, and also felt as though he was caving to his mother’s wishes if he just ended up in familial company. Steve presented a good compromise for Will’s because Mrs. Byers already trusted him with her children for some reason, and it made Jonathan’s face twitch whenever his little brother shouted that he was going out with Steve. It was also worth acknowledging that the younger Byers boy had no issues with infringing on Steve’s time.

Will had also taken a liking to Robin, and she enjoyed his company enough that she actually told Steve to bring her along whenever one of these little shenanigans happened. Once when they had been eating at the old diner and Will had ranted, frustrated over Mike’s fluttering over Eleven’s lost powers more than Will’s own imminent exit.

Sitting in the booth across from him with their shoulders touching, Steve and Robin had both listened as one.

“I completely get you little friend.” Robin had said her voice heavy, and Will had looked up at both of them with dark eyes and messy hair, and Steve floated on the edge of a revelation. No one said anything more, but Will gave Robin a watery smile from under his floppy hair, and given a bit of a double take at Steve’s own expression whatever it was.

In the present his hair isn’t tucked over his eyes in a Beatles bowl cut, instead it’s spiked up aggressively with gel.

“Dude,” Robin says with a grin as Will pulls away from Steve, “Loving the hair.” He gives her a high five and a bright smile.

“Robin, I’m so glad you came!” He chirps brightly. The easy button up shirts and stripes have been deserted in favor of dark tee-shirts and ripped jeans, but Steve can’t help but grin as Will’s goth style rebellion gives way to an open sweetness. There’s still that shadow to his eyes, still a little bit of that hunted, haunted, expression that came from monsters and interdimensional travel, but looking at him now Steve completely understands why Joyce wanted to move. That sullen, angry boy is almost entirely gone.

There’s still a hint of that boy as Will takes in Nancy’s raised eyebrows and Jonathan’s near gape with a smug glint in his eyes. Steve stifles a laugh. Usually Will gives him a half-smile and light hello; Steve was expecting a gentle half-hug due to the reunion after Will’s move. This is so much better. It’s nice to be complicit in the mischief.

“Came for you kiddo.” Robin says in response to Will with a bright grin. “You’re really going all out with those baby artist vibes we talked about, huh.”

“Yeah. I don’t know if Jonathan told you, but I’m a delinquent now.” Will says, beaming up at Robin. He’s not looking nearly as far up as he would have had too even a few months ago, and Steve realizes with a jolt that Will’s been growing.

“Dude you’re so much taller.” He blurts out.

“He’s almost taller than me,” Jonathan says awkwardly with a huffed out laugh finally getting back in the swing of things. He looks up at Steve and there’s a slight flush of red along his cheeks as well.

“Are you staying for dinner?” Will asks the room at large.

“We were planning on getting to a hotel in town tonight, so there’s no harm if we stick around, but we don’t want to put you out…” Robin says before Mrs. Byer’s cuts her off.

“Don’t be silly, you’re not putting anyone out, and you’re staying here tonight. There’s no need to spend the money on a hotel when there’s two perfectly good beds you can use here. Robin, you can stay in Eleven’s room, and Steve you can bunk with Will. The two of them have been pestering me to let them build a fort in the living room for long enough that it might as well happen.”

“Yes!” Will shouts with a fistpump. “Hey El guess what,” he shouts taking off down the hall toward wherever Eleven has tucked herself away.

Jonathan smiles at Steve and Robin from where he’s standing with his arm slung around Nancy.

“I guess you’re staying then.”

Somehow their arrival was the trigger that got the ball rolling on the Byers family routine. Nancy deposits her things in Steve’s room, while Eleven tentatively greets Steve and Robin. The move clearly brightened Will, but it had been harsher on his new sister.

When she emerges Eleven’s hair is longer and frizzier, and she still has Hopper’s blue band tight around her wrist. Unlike Will there is no sign of gothic rebellion or punk rock defiance, even the brightly patterned tops and snappable suspenders that Steve had come to associate with her in the months before the move are absent. Instead she’s wearing a huge dark hoodie with rolled up sleeves and tight jeans that look a little greasy. The only sign of the intense personality from before is her fuzzy lime green socks that have electric blue flowers with yellow centers plastered across them.

Steve notes that Eleven has clearly found her part in the mealtime routine, helping Will set the table as Jonathan helped Joyce stir the pasta sauce that had apparently been ‘bubbling away for quite a while’. Then the two of them sit down at the dining room table and begin regaling the three guests about their new school and times in Indianapolis.

The dinner goes quickly. Robin does better than Steve; she brings her A-Game to impressing the people around her. Maybe Nancy doesn’t laugh quite so hard as everyone else when Robin talks about the antics of her band friends, but it’s not really that noticeable.

Altogether the night is surprisingly easy. There are so many people with broken edges at that table; between Mrs. Byers’s manic grief, Will’s hefty scars from isolation and mind-rape, Eleven’s trauma and ongoing powerlessness, Robin’s masks and deeply held secrets, Jonathan’s tight grip on Nancy as he makes sure that everyone he cares about is within his sight, Nancy’s fierce need to find something to fight, and the way Steve can’t seem to figure out who he is when he’s not in a room with other people, this group should be unable to function at all. Instead they’re not just functioning, its actually fun.

Eventually everything wraps up, Mrs. Byers takes the kids to the living room and begins the pillow fort construction with Nancy and Robin making helpful comment, Steve elects to help Jonathan clear the table and clean the dishes.

He stands with a towel to Jonathan’s left, drying and putting the yellow porcelain plates into the drying rack.

“Thanks for this.” Jonathan says quietly as he hands Steve dish after dish.

“For sure man, my mom taught me manners and stuff you know. Gotta help clean up.”

“Yeah I guess.” Jonathan murmurs, and there is a long pause. “I didn’t actually know.” He says, breaking the pause.

“What do you mean?” Steve asks, and neither statement is an accusation or a condemnation, but Steve keeps his voice soft. This feels important, and he doesn’t want it to become a confrontation. He thinks of Nancy’s bright red eyes and knows that he’s had more than enough of that for one day.

“We’ve never really been friends. It’s weird. I’ve seen you fight monsters and face death to save me and Nancy, but we’ve talked about music or stuff that’s—I don’t know—inane like two times. And then I moved, and it’s just.” Jonathan sighs, “I feel like I know exactly who you are but didn’t have any idea if you would help with the dishes. It kinda sucks.” Steve nods slowly in response.

“I completely get it Byers. I’ve known you for a really long time, and I think for most of it I was being a dick, but when push came to shove, you still made sure the demogorgon didn’t eat me, and I’ll be honest I wouldn’t have called it. For what it’s worth, I had a lot of fun talking about movies and your weird taste in arena rock. It might have only happened twice but that’s enough to call us friends I think.” Steve says gently, trying to keep his tone level and not spook the other boy.

“Yeah. Listen Steve,” Jonathan says tentatively, “About me and Nancy…”

“We don’t need to talk about that.” Steve says quickly and firmly. Maybe too firmly because something shutters closed behind Jonathan’s eyes, and Steve wants to kick himself. He doesn’t want to talk about it, but that’s because it’s embarrassing, not because it’s not okay. There’s another long pause as Steve searches for the right words. What had Jonathan been about to say? What should Steve offer in exchange?

“I got you the camera. For Christmas. After the first round of monster bullshit.” He tries desperately. It wasn’t what he wanted to say at all, but it was what had come out, so he would have to make it work. Jonathan’s bemused look doesn’t really help.

“I know you did.” Jonathan says, confusion lurking behind his tone vague amusement at the subject change.

“No but like, it wasn’t just that I bought it, or that I funded Nancy hitting on you, or anything like that.” Jonathan’s brows pull together as Steve says this. “It was my idea. You gave me the bat and it meant something to you. I needed to make sure you knew that I got it. I wanted to, I don’t know, make it up to you. Make everything up to you.” There’s an energy to the air like the static before a lightning strike. Steve feels overexposed again. Steve knows that there’s something desperate in his eyes, but even he’s not sure what he wants. Jonathan eyes him for a long second, then nods once sharply before turning back toward the dishes.

“You and I were good after you saved my life with that stupid baseball bat.” His voice is a little thick, and he refuses to look anywhere near Steve’s face again. “But for what it’s worth, thank you.” Jonathan shuts off the water and dries his hands before gently gripping Steve shoulder. He squeezes once and then makes for the living room.

Steve feels like he can’t breathe. It’s as though the air in the room has completely vanished. For the amount of time the two have spent interacting, his preoccupation with Jonathan Byers is ridiculous. And now everything is spinning; this stupid conversation, and his desperate confession, and Jonathan’s short but heartfelt response is crushing the air from his lungs.

He honestly isn’t sure if this is what he wanted. If it’s better or worse. There’s no way to know.

Steve hears the kitchen door open, and the telltale squeaks of Robin’s vans as she makes her way over to him and wraps her arms around him as tight as she can.

“How are you doing?” She asks gently as she tucks her face into his shirt.

Horribly, brilliantly, like I’m falling, like I’m flying. They all would be appropriate, but Steve isn’t sure how to say any of them.

“I keep expecting a monster to pop out of the wall.” He croaks out as he buries his nose in her hair.

“I feel you, I keep swinging between thinking this is some kind of stepford family and being convinced that we could make this an episode of murder mystery theater.” Robin says lightly. Steve lets out a little chuckle in response.

“I can’t wait until it’s just us again and I don’t have to think about anything at all.”

“Me too.” She says softly. Will’s voice floats in from the living room, and Steve sighs, letting Robin take on the bulk of his weight. She only grunts a little.

“I suppose we have to get back out there.”

“Yep.”

“We’ll make it through, I suppose.”

“Yes, we will.”

When the two of them do go into the living room, Steve makes sure to keep Robin tucked under his arm like a security blanket. Nancy and Jonathan are similarly wrapped up in each other, and if the two of them and Steve doesn’t make eye contact for the rest of the night no one mentions it.

Chapter Text

The morning arrives, and Steve wakes up to the smell of cooking batter. When he pads out to the dining room, Joyce is flipping perfectly round pancakes into a stack by the stove.

“You didn’t have to do this Mrs. Byers.” Steve says. The smell makes something warm in his chest. It’s been a long, long time since Steve’s woken up to a cooked breakfast

“Oh it was nothing! Will was so thrilled over those radio parts you brought, and it was just such a delight to have you and Robin here last night. It was the least I could do for such great guests.” She says with a smile.

“Thank you anyway.” Steve says grinning back, and Mrs. Byers walks over to him, gently patting him on the shoulder.

“You’re a good boy Steve.”

Her gentle praise makes his cheeks warm, and he lets his eyes slide away from her before going to sit down at the dining room table. Joyce doesn’t say anything more, and the two of them slide into comfortable silence as the batter sizzles.

The kids stumble in next. El is leaning her whole weight onto Will’s shoulder as the two of them collapse next to Steve, rubbing sleep out of their eyes. Will greets his mom, but neither of them move to start conversation after that, seeming to sense the content mood that had settled between Joyce and Steve. When Robin comes out though, already dressed in her clothes for the day, Joyce gives everyone a grin.

“Alright everyone, come grab some pancakes. Jonathan and Nancy were up late so we might as well get started without them.”

Steve feels a little out of place as he watches the slapdash assembly of plates and pancakes. It stirs an odd memory of him and his mother sitting together in front of a fully cooked meal, watching the steam slowly fade as they waited for his father to finish a work call. “You don’t eat until everyone is at the table,” his mother had snapped at him when he reached for the bread rolls.

This is nicer.

When he sits down next to Robin and digs into the stack of pancakes with butter melting on top of them, she hooks his ankle with her foot. Steve gives her a small little grin and bumps his elbow into her side. He notices Joyce’s dark eyes on the two of them, so he continues to dig into his breakfast without any more fanfare. She has this way of looking at people that reminds him so much of Jonathan. The entire Byers clan is made up of artists and observers. They have a way of making Steve feel as though he is being exposed and taken apart in a single glance.

The moment passes though, and soon after they are done eating, and he and Robin are loading their duffle bags back into the car. Jonathan and Nancy finally roll out of their room at this point. Both of them are still wearing pajamas and look bleary. They look as though they’ve only slept an hour or two, and Steve’s eyebrows go up at the sight of them. They aren’t as glowy and entangled as most couples would be after a night spent together. He wonders if they stayed up most of the night talking. He wonders what they talked about.

Steve knows that it’s an unproductive line of thought however, and he desperately tries to school his face into something cool, and chill, and good looking rather than desperately obsessive as the two approach the car. From the way Robin snickers and then hides her mouth behind her hand, he’s unsuccessful.

There’s a tension thrumming along his spine as he looks at Nancy tucked into Jonathan’s side, the way that her arm is wrapped around his waist. They look good together, and Steve desperately wants these two people in his life, some way, somehow. He’s not sure if his expression says no-hard-feelings-people-I-love-please-call-any-time, or more looks constipated. He’s desperately hoping for the former. The two of them don’t seem put off by him, but as the silence extends Steve realizes that neither of them knows what to say either

“It was good to see you two.” He offers lamely, and it would be hilarious how quickly Jonathan and Nancy relax if it weren’t quite so mortifying.

“Yeah!” Nancy says brightly. “It was really fun.” Jonathan nods. The two of them exchange a weighted look that Steve can’t quite interpret.

“Maybe we’ll run into you in New York.” Jonathan says slowly, looking first at Nancy and then turning back to Steve.

Steve nods in response. He can feel a smile blooming across his face that is impossible to repress. This isn’t a lot, but it’s a foot in the door. Robin is proof; once Steve gets through a crack in your walls there’s no getting rid of him.

Jonathan gives him a hesitant smile. It might be the sweetest thing Steve has ever seen even if it’s tentative. Nancy has no reservations and she steps forward to give Steve a gentle half hug.

“Bye Steve. Bye Robin.” She calls across the car. “Have fun on your trip.

Steve hugs her back, and then steps past Nancy to pull Jonathan in toward him. Jonathan seems surprised and doesn’t respond for a moment, before wrapping his arms around Steve’s middle and squeezing tight. There’s a moment where Steve feels like he’s floating in space.

With Jonathan’s arms around him Steve feels utterly secure. It’s totally different from hugging Nancy. It seems almost celebratory. The only times where Steve has ever hugged another man like this have all involved sports. He feels like he’s six again, standing in the summer sunshine on a little league field with his arms around Jonathan Byers—nothing can touch them and they’re on top of the world.

The moment ends as Jonathan pulls away. Steve clears his throat a little uncomfortably.

“Bye I guess. I’ll see you guys around.” Steve offers. He ducks inside the car where Robin is waiting, feet already propped up on the dashboard.

“That was some farewell.” she says with a grin. Steve shoots her a look.

“Shut up.” He says ginning.

“Three parts awkward, four parts tender.” Robin says giving him a pat on the shoulder. “Now that your relationship drama has concluded you ready to rock and roll?” Steve thinks for protesting for a moment but lets it go. It’s not like she’s wrong. Instead he settles for beaming at her.

“Let’s do it.” Steve says to her, and all of the armor that Robin has been wearing in the company of the Hawkins contingent melts away. There’s an openness to her expression as Steve shifts into gear and pulls the car out of the driveway. Robin reaches forward to pop a new tape into the deck, and the dulcet sounds of Otis Redding come spilling out of Steve’s speakers.

As his voice crackles out of Steve’s speakers, crooning about rolling down to the ‘Frisco bay Steve feels as though all the weight of the world is lifting off of him. He reaches out and pumps up the volume as he cruises out of Indianapolis with Robin at his side.

Both of them know all the words to this song. Both of them know every inch of music that they’ve hands-selected for the road trip mixtapes. The huge black boombox in Steve’s basement is Robin’s favorite thing about his house. He knows because she’s told him so.

There is no mistaking the glowing delight on her face when she first sees it, the way her head whips backward towards him as she laughs in delight. “Harrington you’ve been holding out on me!” The first time he ever shows her that huge hunk of black plastic is one of his most treasured memories of Robin. The two of them end up spending so much time together hunched over the record player and boombox in that basement, sometimes high, sometimes drunk, sometimes stone cold sober. The first time is still his favorite.

He brought her downstairs to the music room only a few days in the aftermath of the Starcourt fight. It’s weird to think about how strange it had been then. The two of them were friends before everything went down, but as always in Hawkins, the bonds of trauma run deep and strong, tying everyone even tighter together than they expect. It’s awkward for Steve in those first few days after as he wonders if he is going to be left again by another girl he loves. In some ways he feels closer to Robin than he’s ever felt to anyone else. On the other hand, Robin is so much cooler than him that it’s not even funny.

When she had agreed to come over it lit up something warm in his chest, and even though he’d been uncertain about how it would go, the moment he saw her face light up at the sight of the boom box he knew that the two of them were going to be fine. Music was their first common ground in a world that had undergone a complete paradigm shift.

Sometimes that initial fear wells up in Steve’s chest though. He knows Robin to the core of her, and what comes with that is the certainty that she could be friends with whoever she likes because Robin is amazing and can always do better. He honestly doesn’t know what Julliard was thinking. Robin could change the world if it so much as struck her fancy. It baffles him how not everyone can see that. It baffles him that Robin hides it, only allowing herself to loosen when the two of them are alone.

He pictures her in California as the two of them drive on. He can see it. Robin in one of her maxi skirts, hair floating around her face in the sunshine as a pretty girl in a bikini top and daisy-dukes hands her a joint. It’s a nice picture in his brain. If he has to lose his best friend he’s damn well going to lose her to someplace awesome. According to his research about UC Berkeley it would fit Robin perfectly. Now the two of them just need to go see if it passes muster.

Steve doesn’t like thinking about this stuff though. Even though the thought of Robin succeeding and getting everything she deserves bolsters him a little bit, there’s an odd malaise that comes over him whenever he confronts it. He focuses on the music instead, letting the soundtracks that he and Robin had poured over, timed out, and lovingly burned onto magnetic foil in plastic tape cartridges take over his every thought.

He and Robin chat during the drive about little nothings. She doesn’t bring up Nancy or Jonathan after her initial comment. Steve is grateful. Neither of them really like talking about the important things in life. It’s too hard. Sometimes in the dead of night when they’re sitting in the dark of Steve’s car, the barriers that the two of them both keep between themselves and the world come all the way down and they’ll actually talk about the important things, but even then it’s not comfortable.

That sort of talking feels heavy, and you have to be careful with that kind of weight in Hawkins, just in case it drowns you. For Steve it’s better to shout along to recordings and dance under the bright lights of his basement than talk about the fact that those lights are on all the time so that he’ll know when the monsters are coming.

Robin takes over the wheel in the middle of an empty expanse of plains. It’s warmer here than in Indiana, and there’s only rolling grass as far as the eye can see surrounding the rest stop. The sun heats the air, and while Robin gets snacks Steve sits on the hood of the car staring out at the seemingly endless expanse of land and sky. He feels like he should be used to this kind of landscape being from Indiana, but he’s honestly not. For some reason Hawkins is thick with trees and woods.

A packet of gummy worms hits him in the side of the head.

“Get in the car loser. I wanna give this pretty car a spin.” Robin says grinning. “We’ve got miles to go Steve.” He smiles back at her and uses her voice as a lifeline to turn down the static in the back of his head that these empty rolling fields have inspired.

“Alright Rob, lets roll.” Steve says, and ducks into the passenger side.

It quickly becomes clear that Robin is not nearly as good of a driver as he is. She drives way too fast and is easily distracted from the road. It nearly gives him a heart attack a couple times over the course of the next hours, in particular when she almost veers into the oncoming path of a semitruck on a wide highway road.

The ensuing adrenaline burst has Steve sweating and swearing for the next ten minutes as Robin cackles maniacally at his bloodless face. He makes her pull over at the next rest stop and takes the driver’s seat back from her with great prejudice.

They make their way leisurely across the United States, stopping at little motels with Steve’s dad’s credit card as they go. It rains a little bit, but for winter, there’s a surprising lack of weather in the flatlands that they roll through. When they get to the mountains though it starts to snow, and Steve pulls over to take in the big fat flakes drifting through the air. It’s not that cold; in fact the fatter the flake, the closer to just being at the freezing point it is.

Still, Robin takes great pleasure in ordering a hot chocolate from a Dunkin Doughnuts that is tucked into the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, far from where it is supposed to be. She drinks it with her knees tucked into her chest, fat snowflakes painting the car window.

They pull into a ski lodge in Colorado at midnight. The snow has evolved from being one step removed from rain to actually being a genuine problem for the treads of Steve’s BMW. There are piles of snow outside the lodge and huge banks of white line the sides of the salted streets.

“Holy shit.” Robin whispers as they get out of the car, duffle bags slug over their shoulders. “It looks like Christmas-town, like Santa’s-ville.”

Steve snorts a surprised laugh and then claps a hand over his face as the cold air burns his nostrils. This makes Robin burst out into giggles of her own. And this is how they stumble into the lodge.

They book a room for the night. The key is attached to a painted piece of wood shaped like a pine tree. Mabel, the receptionist that greets them at the counter calls Steve Robin’s young man and shoots her wink, which makes the two of them burst into snarfing giggles again. She also tells them that there is a jacuzzi in a glass hothouse. They barely do more than drop their bags on the neatly made beds before they are pulling on their bathing suits. The promise of LA’s beaches means that they are prepared for this moment.

The whole glass building stinks of chlorine, which is wafting through the space from the small steaming tub. It’s nice to let the water just melt down the stiffness that comes from driving all day. Eventually Robin devises a game where the two of them throw gummy bears at each other and try to catch them in their mouths moving through the hot tub water. The real trick ends up being fishing the gummy bears out of the steaming chlorine pit before they melt.

Eventually the two of them run out of energy and end up staring out at the floating bits of snow that are painting the world white outside. Robin breaks the silence first.

“Steve, I had a question. It’s about Billy.” There’s a pause as Steve keeps looking out at the snow and then slowly turns to face Robin, letting his shoulders sink below the surface of the water.

“Alright.” He responds. The package from Max had been tucked in the back corner of his trunk for the entirety of the trip, out of sight and mostly out of mind. Occasionally his thoughts will drift towards it. Steve will sometimes think about Max’s desperate tone and the image of Billy impaled in front of Eleven. Then he’ll think of Billy on top of him, the twisted grin as he brought his fists down onto Steve’s face over and over again.

“Are we actually going to deliver that package?” Robin asks. “Because you brought it and you told me to pack for LA, but you haven’t mentioned it again, so I was wondering.” Steve sighs in response.

“I don’t know. It’s weird. I feel like I should, if only because Max asked me to, but there’s this little part of my brain that keeps thinking that it means that I forgive him if I do, you know. And I honestly don’t know if I do.” Steve says, and Robin nods.

“I get it. It’s not like doing one good thing erases all the shit he did.” She says.

“Yeah, but that’s the thing, I feel like everyone seems to think it does.” Steve parses out slowly.

“Well, it was sort of a sign of him trying to change at least.” Robin replies, and even though she’s playing Devil’s Advocate there’s an air of dubiousness to her tone that Steve keys onto.

“You don’t agree?” He asks.

“I don’t know if I agree or not. I think redemption takes work. It takes effort to fix things with the people you’ve wronged, and I guess he tried a little for Max, but it’s not like he ever bothered with you. I think there were signs that he was trying to change, but he died before he could really put in the work and show that he meant it.” Robin says levelly. It’s a mask though. Steve can see that there’s emotion under it.

“What would you do then?” He asks her.

“You’ve got to understand Steve, you’re my person. In my brain you matter most.” She prevaricates.

“But what would you do?” He presses. There’s a beat of silence as Robin meets his gaze head on.

“I would go to LA, find a bonfire on the beach, and burn the box. Maybe use the fire to light a celebratory joint for the asshole finally being dead.” Steve feels his eyebrows go up. He nods slowly. It’s not his MO but he could see Robin doing that.

“So Steve, what are you going to do with Max’s Billy Box?” Robin asks.

“I don’t know yet.” He says gently. Robin nods, then splashes him from across the jacuzzi. She laughs as Steve sputters, dripping.

“Well don’t let it get you down dingus. We’ve got a whole adventure to go on here, no point in thinking about him until you have to.” She says, even though she brought it up.

Steve splashes her and then the game is on. They tumble back into the room an hour later shaking with giggles.

The trip is simultaneously uneventful, and somehow the most fun that Steve has ever had. There’s something gleeful about eating baked beans and barbeque with Robin at a little roadside restaurant in the mountains. The trees are different than in Hawkins, the air is clear and cool, and there’s constantly music playing out of the speakers.

The road to Berkeley seems to fly by. Steve’s poor BMW is coated in a layer of dirt brought on by driving through wind and snow. Steve does as Robin asked and lets the weight of Hawkins go as much as he can.

Steve drives as fast as he can when the highways let him, and it feels half like a desperate escape and half like a daring adventure. Having Robin next to him makes it easier. He thinks that if he were alone this would feel far too familiar, like throwing party after party just to have a reason to keep the lights on. With Robin at his side there’s a goal at the end of the rainbow.

She seems to be having fun too. When Steve farts after eating baked beans—a truly monstrous rip—she cackles for nearly two minutes and then pretends the only reason that she stopped laughing is that the fumes have suffocated her.

Still the closer they get to Berkeley the more an air of tension falls over the car. The reason that they are here doesn’t sit comfortably with either of them

The East Bay is grungy as Steve drives through it. There are flyers tacked onto brick walls and rolling cracked concrete streets. Steve finds meter parking outside of a small Thai restaurant across the street from the campus. The two of them wait for a moment in the car looking out their windows.

Robin gestures at the restaurant. “You wanna?” She says tentatively. Steve nods.

“After you pretty lady.” He says with a grin, and the two of them vacate the car.

There’s almost no one in the restaurant when they enter. Sitting at a counter facing the kitchen is a slender Asian man wearing a ripped black tee shirt and jeans with a white long-sleeved shirt on underneath and black leather cuffs on his wrists. On the front of his shirt is an alligator with a forked tongue and white downy wings. It’s a strange image. Steve thinks that he might be wearing eyeliner, but he can’t see quite well enough to tell. Sitting next to him is a woman who is almost totally obscured from Steve’s view. He can see her hair though, which is exploding out of her scalp as a curly red mane. She’s wearing an acid green leather jacket that looks like it’s made of snakeskin.

The two of them are so cool that it’s almost too much for Steve’s heart to take. He flicks Robin a look, and she lifts her eyebrows at him. She rolls her eyes as he looks compulsively back at the couple and brushes past him with the menus in hand to sit down at a corner booth for two. Steve quickly follows.

He orders the first thing that he sees on the menu, which turns out to be a green soupy thing that is so spicy he thinks he won’t be able to eat again for a week. Robin ends up with a yellow coconutty mixture and laughs at his pain as though she wasn’t just as lost on the food situation as he was.

The couple also notices him struggling, and the woman openly laughs at him.

“I’ll adjust.” He blusters. It’s pretty pointless, he’s bright red and sweating. The man at least hides his laughter behind a hand.

“Maybe the mild would suit you better.” The unknown man offers, as he and his girlfriend make to get up. Before he can think better of it, Steve sticks out his hand.

“Thanks for the advice. I’m Steve.” The two exchange a look, before stepping forward in tandem.

“I’m Park,” the man says shaking his hand, then he loops a thumb backwards towards his companion in the snakeskin patterned blazer. “That’s Eleanor.”

“Nice to meet you guys.” Steve says as brightly as he can while still wheezing.

“Since my guy here has no manners, my name is Robin.” She says from behind him. Steve shoots her a quick guilty look, but she just winks at him.

“Cool,” says Eleanor in response, “I haven’t seen you guys around before, are you new here?”

“We’re just visiting UC Berkeley.” Robin offers with a grin.

“We’re only in town for the one night before we’re going down to LA.” Steve follows up. The couple in front of them exchanges a glance before Park gives Eleanor a nearly imperceptible shrug.

“If you’re interested, a band that we’re roadying for will be playing at the Slipknot tonight. It’s punk music if you’re into that. Very goth. There’ll be dancing and drinks if you want to come.” Eleanor offers. Now it’s Steve’s turn to exchange a look with Robin. There’s only excitement on his face, but he’ll leave the decision to her.
“We’d love to come.” Robin says with a grin.

The two of them give Steve and Robin a matching set of grins, and then head out.

The interaction colors the rest of the tour. Robin can’t stop gushing over Eleanor’s jacket and hair and general everything, while Steve throws in a couple comments about Park’s general everything just to keep it even.

The two of them end up talking more about the evening ahead then about anything UC Berkeley related. It’s strange for Steve. It makes something in his stomach settle but at the same time it feels like there’s still a giant shoe about to come down on him. Steve decides that denial is the best course of action.

They check into the shitty motel that they’ve rented for the night. Robin has the appropriate attire for this affair packed, but Steve doesn’t own anything remotely cool enough to merit inducting him into this group. He settles for jeans and an artsy black tee-shirt with a batman logo on it. It’s tight fitting and a little threadbare because he honestly only wears it as pajamas but his thin black and grey flannel over it with the sleeves rolled up kind of works. He does his hair next to Robin doing her smoky eye, and when she offers him her eyeliner, he gives her a tentative nod.

The eyeliner makes him look sharp. It also makes him take several quick short breaths and put his head between his knees when Robin goes to put on her jewelry. Guys wearing makeup is not something that has ever been regarded well in his family. He can practically feel his dad’s icy stare even though the man is thousands of miles away.

Still, Park had been wearing eyeliner, and he had been arm-in-arm with that girl Eleanor, so it was clear that eyeliner didn’t really mean all that much. Wearing it doesn’t mean that Steve is saying anything about himself. No not at all. No need for panic here! Besides it really takes his angularity game to the next level.

Steve takes another steadying breath before going to meet Robin by the door. When he’s not looking at himself in the mirror he can compartmentalize enough that the panic ingrained by listening to a lifetime of his mom and dad speaking out loud recedes. Out of sight, out of mind.

The two of them roll out arm in arm. Robin looks amazing. She’s in black trouser pants, combat boots, and a weird blousy shirt that’s a deep kind of purple color with her chain necklace. She isn’t wearing a jacket, which Steve realizes is going to be a problem as they walk towards the club. For all that they had been expecting the eternal California good weather, Berkeley is freezing and shrouded in fog.

Robin is shivering within two blocks, so Steve slings his arm over her shoulders and tucks her into the warmth of his side. When they get to the club, there’s a huge bouncer standing at the door, looking down at the two of them.

“What are you looking at?” He grits out at the two of them. Robin’s eyes go a little wide as she and Steve exchange a glance.

“Uh, Park and Eleanor invited us.” He says with as much brazen confidence as he can manage. It’s always the confidence that got it done at high school parties. The bouncer eyes him, unamused, before leaning inside the door where the pounding music is coming from to talk to someone. There’s a wait for a couple long moments before the bouncer resets himself.

“He coming.” He grunts. Then everything lapses into silence. The wait is rather grim until Park, wearing the same clothes as earlier tumbles out the door of the club. He’s clearly enlivened from before. He’s sweaty and his black eyeliner is smeared around his eyes. He seems brighter, sharper somehow. Steve finds his gaze catching on the angles of his face. It’s hard to look away.

“Hey guys.” Park says ginning. “It’s good to see you.” He pats the bouncer on the arm and the huge man shifts to let the two of them pass by. “Thanks man.” He says.

Steve and Robin trail after him like ducklings. The room is full of full on goth costumery, but with the eyeliner Steve doesn’t stick out too much, he just looks to be more on the Nirvana-grungy end of the spectrum.

Eleanor is sitting at the foot of the stage fixing something with the speakers still dressed in that spectacular coat. Her hair is still a halo around her head, and she’s wearing no makeup at all. It works for her. Her figure is rounded, but that only means that she has curves in all the right places. Steve realizes then that Eleanor is wearing huge platform heeled boots also acid green. Her jeans flare around them. Even wearing them she’s still significantly shorter than Park and Steve. It makes Steve want to tuck her under his arm the way he used to do with Nancy. He wants to help pick up the amps for her. He lets his gaze shift off of Park and settle on Eleanor. Seems safer that way.

The sound that the crowd is currently shifting to seems to be entirely recorded music, but Steve notes that the band is on the stage getting ready. Park leans down to kiss Eleanor on the cheek as they walk over. She tugs his hair with gentle familiarity as he does, then looks up at the two of them and brightens.

“The new people came.” She says over the music with a grin. “You’re right in time. They’re going to start playing soon.”

Steve gins at her. He can already feel himself shifting to the rhythm and he knows Robin is doing the exact same thing. Music is something that both of them always respond to. He tends to be a head bopper, whereas Robin is all twisting hips and smooth grace, but they go well together anyway.

Park and Eleanor both clearly note the way they’re moving and grin.

“You guys are going to fit right in.” Park says with a smile. “Let us finish setting up and then we’ll dance.”

It takes another five minutes for Eleanor and Park to finish doing whatever it was that they were doing with the cords at the front of the stage. They go and talk with the band for a brief moment before hopping off the stage. The music over the speakers cuts out and the front man turns to the abruptly silent crowd before plucking a single long sustained note on his guitar. It warbles out and the crowd starts cheering and moving even before the drums crash in.

It’s exhilarating. Steve finds himself moving to the beat bopping his head and pumping his arms wildly as Robin grooves at his side. Eleanor and Park move around them in an orbit. Song after song goes, and Steve lets himself cut loose to the beat. His concerns melt away in a haze of sweat and sound. It’s so much easier to be happy when it’s to loud to think or care.

After a while Steve finds himself with Park’s arms around his neck and his own hands on Park’s waist as the two of them move to the beat. Park, despite being lithe is also rock solid, and Steve tightens his grip on his hips so he can feel the flex of muscle under the hem of his tee-shirt as Park moves.

Up close Park’s eyeliner looks even better than it did before, and his caramel skin is glowing under the lights. Steve can’t tell if it’s makeup or sweat that’s making Park’s skin shimmer like that. The two of them move together in tandem for several beats until Steve feels a gentle touch to his own side. It’s Eleanor.

He moves one arm away from Park to ensnare Eleanor’s waist as well and pull her in. Her hair is like a separate entity moving to the beat. There’s a smattering of freckles across the bridge of her nose, which bears the same shimmer of sweat. Park leans across Steve to pull Eleanor into a kiss. Steve’s glad. Someone should be kissing Eleanor. Someone should be kissing Park.

The three of them move together then, one motion for three bodies and Steve thinks that if there’s a way to get to heaven on earth it would be from dancing like this bracketed between an amazingly hot guy and hot girl.

It’s perfect up until he spots Robin, and all of a sudden, his carefree world comes crashing down. Her expression is totally frozen, and she looks genuinely upset staring into space. He can’t catch her gaze before she turns and makes for the door. It’s the work of an instant to disentangle himself from Park and Eleanor then.

Park makes a questioning sound, and Steve gestures to the door, “Checking on Robin!” he shouts over the thundering music, and Park gives him a quick nod. Eleanor just gives him a knowing glance. “Negotiation is important.” She shouts. Steve isn’t honestly sure what she means by that, but it makes Park laugh so he leaves them to it and makes for the door.

There’s a cold horror building in the pit of his stomach. He’s not sure where something went wrong but clearly something did. The strobe lighting keeps flashing and it’s making his anxiety spike all of a sudden. Was there a monster? He half hopes it was a monster. Robin’s not like his father, he knows that Robin won’t ever judge him, but he can’t help the fear.

Steve makes his way outside and spots Robin shivering by a derelict hydrant at the corner. The streetlights are steady in their orange glow, and it steadies his racing heart as he makes his way over.

“Are you okay?” He asks. It’s not a shout but it’s still louder than he meant it; his ears are still ringing from the music.

“I’m fine.” Robin bites out. Steve can feel his eyebrows go up. That’s not sadness or horror. That’s anger.

“Clearly not, Rob. Did someone try something?” He asks, getting a little preemptively mad at the thought.

“God Steve, it’s nothing that you would understand.” She says. It’s a little more wet this time. The look on her face freezes him in place and all of a sudden Steve is certain that this is somehow something he did. He doesn’t quite know how to believe it.

“Explain it to me then.” Steve says quietly. He needs to hear it from Robin.

“It’s not important!” Robin cries back, still frustrated, but it seems less personal, more self-directed this time. Maybe it’s not that. She sighs and then forces up a grin. “Don’t worry about it; you were just having fun I didn’t mean to ruin the mood.”

It’s a moment of relief then Steve can feel another surge of frustration. He doesn’t like it when Robin pulls away from him, they’ve been through too much together for that. Still he doesn’t understand why she’s so off and it’s clearly a problem.

“Robin,” He starts, then she cuts him off clearly reading the look on his face.

“I’m being stupid Steve. It’s so stupid, but I’m just you know, jealous. You dance with whoever you want and no one even looks twice. It doesn’t matter who you dance with because everyone can see you look at Eleanor and knows that it doesn’t mean anything when you dance with Park…” Robin says, firmly at first and then softer as she tapers off into confusion at whatever expression has taken hold of Steve’s face.

“I don’t think that’s entirely true.” Steve says quietly back. He’s not sure how to make her see what’s going on with him. He’s not sure how to make her see that he’s not having fun at her expense or anyone’s expense, that this is him more serious than he ever has been. He’s not sure how much he can admit to himself, let alone her.

“It’s stupid to be jealous.” Robin says into space, forging on when he doesn’t keep going. “I just wish I could’ve danced with Eleanor the way you danced with Park. But it would have meant something different.” She gives him a tight grin that’s so forced it’s painful. “I’m not even brave enough to try it.”

Steve struggles for the right words, the ones that will make her understand. He takes a cigarette out of his pocket and lights it as he thinks. Taking a drag helps with the tremor in his fingers. He ends up coming at it sideways.

“How do you feel if you imagine us dating?” Robin’s eyebrows lift, and her grin becomes more genuine.

“Us dating. Are you serious?”

“Yes seriously.” Steve says. “People keep bringing it up and we laugh about it because to us it’s ridiculous, and we use it because sometimes it’s helpful, but if you think about it, seriously, right now, how does it make you feel?”

The smile on Robin’s face fades as she takes in the genuine gravity of Steve’s question. There’s a lull as she searches Steve’s face for any sign of condemnation or judgment. Steve doesn’t take offense; she has a right to be nervous and he knows that she’s not expecting to find anything, she’s just buying herself time and ideas.

“It feels cold,” she starts quietly, then picking up speed, “it feels like the drop in your stomach when you come over the roller coaster or when you hear something shatter in your house.” Steve nods. Maybe once upon a time this feeling would have been foreign, but he thinks by now he knows it well.

“Like Christmas lights flashing in the Byers house.” He offers, and Robin gives her own nod in return.

“Or like looking Starcourt from that hill. It’s the goosebumps before the disaster when there’s ice in your veins, it’s the tension before the monster. It feels ...”

“Horrifying.” Steve finishes. There is a long pause.

“Yeah. That it.” Robin says quietly.

“Robin, for me I don’t feel like that when I think about dating you or dating any girl. I look at girls and feel excited about it. It’s all the good things about roller coasters. All the fun with none of that horror.” Steve takes a drag of his cigarette and sighs, a bit defeated. “But this whole thing, with tonight, is that maybe I don’t feel horrified when I think about guys either. Maybe I feel, like, the opposite of that. I’m not. It’s not. Meaningless.”

There’s a pause after he says it, as though all the air in the world has vanished into the black void of the sky. He can’t bring himself to look at her. Instead he takes another drag and desperately tries to stop shaking.

“It’s not a problem.” Robin says quietly, pressing her shoulder into Steve’s and leaning the bulk of her weight against him. As she does it feels like a release. The words pour out of Steve in a rush.

“Well it might not be a problem, but it doesn’t really give a helpful path forward either. I don’t really know what I’m supposed to be. I’m not like you or those guys on the news. I know I’m not; girls are hot, and I really love touching them. It’s not like that with me.” Steve frowns, and he knows Robin can practically feel the introspection that’s moving through his mind. Steve isn’t usually an introspective guy.

“Plus, you’re not wrong to be mad. I can pass for whatever I want I guess. When I don’t know who’s around, or don’t feel comfortable I can always turn to the cute girl and flirt and look and feel good about it. Just ignore the Jonathan Byers with his hair or Park and his dumb eyeliner. Or I guess the other way around too if I want. I don’t really know if there is any word for being caught in the middle like me. Ugh it’s so stupid. And I have it easy, so I should really stop bitching.” Robin huffs a laugh and then entwines her fingers with his, gripping his hand tight.

“I don’t know if that’s actually easier Steve. It’s still sucks to pretend, and I guess you don’t even have the benefit of clarity. I don’t know how your sad little mind can handle it all dingus.” She makes the last words light, and Steve can tell that she’s trying to unsettle the cloud that has surrounded him.

His eyes slide over to her, and after a beat of consideration he decides to take the words in the spirit in which they were offered, a grin coming over his face.

“My mind is perfectly fine, thank you very much.”

“Well there was all that head trauma…”

“Shush. I refuse to entertain this nonsense.”

“You know that it’s okay right. That there’s nothing wrong with you. Because I know that, I just want to make sure we’re on the same page.” Robin says tentatively.

“Thanks Rob.” He says instead of responding properly. He bumps his shoulder into hers gently. It’s the best he can do.

“Do you want to go back inside? We could dance some more.” He asks. Robin laughs softly, and then settles into something faraway. It’s her mystic voice; the one that makes Steve think about the stories his mother used to read him, where the lesson at the end wasn’t always nice or easy.

“I kind of want to go home. Or I want to go back. I don’t know which. I want to go home, to the home where I wasn’t afraid of monsters and was definitely going to Julliard, and everything was just easy. It’s not that I’m not grateful for the things I gained.” She squeezes his hand here. “I just…wish it were a little less of a big weird world.” Steve recognizes the longing in her voice. He knows it intimately.

It’s the feeling that haunted his big empty house and made him want to dance with Nancy like yesterday hadn’t happened. The sensation was a trap, because when you fed it, it only got hungrier. Didn’t mean it didn’t feel shitty. Didn’t mean he didn’t feel the same way.

“I get it.” He says quietly. “I completely get it.”

“What do you do when it bothers you? Because I was half jealous of you, but honestly I think the other half of why I got so upset was because the lights made me think that a monster was going to pop out of the walls.” Robin asks.

“I turn on all the lights as bright as they go and listen to music as loud as I can make it.” Steve responds, letting a wry expression twist his mouth. Robin glances back at the rock club, which the thumping music is still pounding out of and the flashing lights over the dance floor are illuminating the side walk through the crack the bouncer is staunchly defending.

“Huh,” she remarks slowly.

“Sometimes I call you.” Steve admits, giving her had a little squeeze. Robin looks up at him with her wide blue eyes.

“Does it ever stop?” She asks, and there’s an odd kind of fear in her voice. Steve knows the answer that she wants to hear, the answer he had tried to make a reality before Nancy shredded every last bullshit defense that he had. He can’t give it to her though.

“No.” Steve says. It might be the worst thing that’s ever come out of his mouth, and Robin’s expression crumbles a little as that willothewisp hope she had been clinging to sputters out. She brings her free hand up and scrubs it over her face.

“That sucks.” She murmurs into the air.

“Yeah tell me about it.” Steve responds, his tone a little more sour than he intended. There’s a silence that falls between them, and it’s heavy. Steve hates heavy silences; they feel like they might drown him. Robin swallows and pulls her hand away from her face.

“So,” she drawls “Jonathan Byers, really.” Steve’s head snaps toward her, eyes wide. Robin’s eyes are a little red but her smile is clear.

“Shut up, he’s cute. Wait what’s wrong with Jonathan?” He retorts indignant, but there’s a smile growing on his own face.

“He takes shitty photos of the woods Steven.” He lets the grin bloom across his face as she says it. Robin’s teeing him up, and as she does it he knows in the bones of him that the two of them are going to be fine. He lets go of her hand and pulls her tight into his side. They fit together like they were made to be; she’s the other half of him wandering around in the world. There’s only one way to tell her that though.

“He’s got dreams, Robin.” Steve lets the words linger in the air. There’s a tinge of melancholy to them, less of the manic energy that the two of them had been possessed by the first time around, less of the relief and less of the terror. More love though.

“You know Steve, I’m never, ever, going to exist in a world that doesn’t have you in it.” Robin says quietly. Steve decides to cut to the chase.

“Don’t be silly Rob, you’d love it here.”

“I hate it here Steve. The college campus is covered in posters that try hard kids make to show off how accepting they are. The only things I’ve like so far are Park and Eleanor, and they’re roadies, who knows where they’ll be next.”

“It just feels like I’m messing up your life. Holding you back from being amazing.” Steve admits quietly. “You’re not Tammy Thompson. Your dreams are actually backed up by talent.” Robin lets out a harsh laugh at that.

“How could you hold me back Steve? I really don’t get how you could think that. You’re the only person who’s actually known the truth about me and just been fine with it, no questions asked.” She says wetly her fingers twisting into the fabric of his shirt.

Steve has no idea what to say to that, the words catch in his throat and he chokes on them.

“Hold me back. God you’re so stupid Steve. Sometimes it feels like you’re the only reason that I’m brave enough to do anything at all.” She says softly, continuing when he is still silent. “I don’t want to look at colleges, I don’t want to tell my parents that I even humored this stupid thing that I don’t care about. I just want to go to New York and be with you. Maybe make some music too.”

Steve turns then and pulls her into the front of his chest, wrapping his arms around her as tight as he can and tucks his nose into her hair. He breathes out a shuddering gasp, once and then again.

“You and me in New York huh.” He says wetly. “I guess we can do that”

“Hell, yeah we can. We lived through Hawkins Steve, we can do anything.” Robin murmurs into his chest. He can hear the intensity in it even if he can’t see her face.

“I want to deliver that package.” He says in response, pulling away so he can look her in the eyes. It seems like a non-sequitur, but he knows it’s not. It’s him and Robin till the end of the world. He knows her, and now she knows him down to his bones. He needs her to be with him on this.

“Are you sure?” She asks.

“Yeah.” He says in response. “I know that Billy sucked, but we lived, and he didn’t, and the only person who really cares seems to be Max. Even shitbags deserve to be mourned by people who love them.” Robin nods slowly after he finishes.

“I guess, I think you’re right but if it was just me I still wouldn’t do it. You’re a better person than me Steve.” Robin grins at the last bit a little.

“I highly doubt that.” Steve laughs before sobering a little. “It won’t be easy. But I don’t think it counts if it’s easy.” Steve says, and Robin nods.

“I’m glad you came on this trip with me Steve.” She says. The air between them is soft and Steve grins at her. All of a sudden, he realizes that he is incandescently happy. It’s a strange feeling. He doesn’t think he’s been this happy since Nancy first went off to fight monsters without him. He doesn’t think he’s been this happy since he realized there were monsters in the world. It’s a bit of a slow burn but it’s like the weight that has been crushing down on him is totally and completely gone.

“I’m really fucking glad to. Do you want to come dance?” He says, taking a step back and extending his hand to her. “You and me.” He tacs on.

“Yeah.” She says with a smile. And they do.

Chapter Text

There’s a bright abandon and lack of tension in the air between Steve and Robin as they make the drive to Los Angeles. They decide to go the long way, tripping down the coast over a series of days and keeping the ocean in view rather than driving through more farmland.

The ocean is the most beautiful thing Steve’s ever seen. The first motel that they stay in is directly off the highway near Santa Cruz; its name proclaims it an Oceanside Inn. Even though the air is cold the sun is bright, and the combination makes sitting on the beach with Robin tucked into his side under his feel totally transcendent. The ocean glitters in the sun and the two of them people watch. Neither of them goes in the water though. The shores are rocky and the waves are too big for either of them to try testing their swimming prowess.

“The girl in the sweatpants with pink polka-dots is in love with sweater boy.” Robin says as they eye another group of high schoolers down the beach.

“I thought sweater boy was dating the fake poet girl?” Steve questions, having lost the thread of their invented narrative a little.

“Yes, yes,” Robin says dismissively, “But she’s pining you see. She wants to snatch him away for herself.”

“Why do that when she could date both of them.” Steve throws out carelessly, as though he doesn’t care—even though he does care, he cares so much. Robin grins at him with bright, knowing eyes.

“That’s a bold theory sir.” She says.

“It’s the only real theory,” Steve faux-scoffs, “Look at the way she keeps looking at their hands and glancing between them. She’s an equal opportunity lady, I’ll tell you that much.” Robin laughs out loud, and Steve lets himself laugh along. It feels good.

After Berkeley, Steve feels like he could run up mountains and touch the sky. The world feels like it’s in focus for the first time. It still doesn’t feel quite right or real, this lightness, in fact Steve feels like another person altogether. He looks at the jock in board shorts across the way and it’s almost as though he has double vision, his outside-self appreciating, his inside-self hysterically laughing. Robin just keeps looking at him with this strange happy expression. It’s nice.

It doesn’t change as they keep driving either. Steve starts tentatively with the newfound sharing, but Robin only reacts well. Steve feels like he’s glowing like a pregnant lady.

By Santa Barbra the two of them have fallen into a rhythm. They drive for a few hours in the morning, and then stop at whatever motel seems most convenient. When Steve finally got around to calling Dustin he got thoroughly cursed out by a child who generally attacked his character and implied that Steve’s lack of organizational abilities would get him shanked in some shitty seaside motel. It’s nice to hear the little shitstain’s voice so Steve lets him get away with it.

When they get to Santa Barbra the air is warmer. It’s nice enough out that Steve and Robin go out to the parking lot from their motel room and leave Steve’s car idling in park with his tape player going and the windows rolled down. They lay out one of the scratchy quilts from the motel room across the hood of the car and sit down on top of it, staring up at the sky and passing a pack of dipping dots between the two of them.

“This is nice.” Robin says as they listen to “Stand By Me” come warbling out of the speakers.

“Yeah.” Steve replies. There’s a long idle silence as they stare out over the inky black water. The street and city lights from Santa Barbra make the night sky a little fainter, but there’s still a beautiful glitter of starlight over the water, even though the full milky way that is standard viewing from the Hawkins woods isn’t visible.

“I wonder what she’s like?” Steve asks the air. Robin hmm’s from next to him.

“Her name is Matilda, right?” She replies vaguely.

“Yeah.” Steve says softly in response.

“She was friends with Billy, so she’s either a total saint or a total psychopath.” Robin says. Steve lets it hang in the air for a moment as he muses on it.

“Max said she was his ex-girlfriend, little more than just a friend. Billy hung onto her address though, so she must have meant something to him.” Steve finally replies.

“That’s right, she did say that didn’t she. Super fucked up that he had a will and everything. I mean once you know about the monsters you can’t help but think about it, but he had a box and a list before he knew about that shit.” Robin muses. It makes Steve’s breath catch a little in his throat. All of a sudden Billy seems so much more human.

“Can I tell you a secret?” Steve asks Robin with a stilted breath.

“Yeah.” Robin says, still looking up at the sky. On anyone else the lack of eye contact would be dismissive, but for Robin it’s just a simple moment of kindness giving him space to breathe.

“I have a list for a box too. So does Jonathan and so does Nancy. I know Dustin has one even though I’m not sure about the rest of the kids. That’s not the secret though. The secret is that Byers and I have had our lists since before we knew the Upside Down existed.” Steve says this quietly, as though saying it gently, only a step above a whisper, will keep his words sacrosanct.

So often he feels as though Robin is magical. Sometimes she’ll say something with her mystic voice, and it will seem so true that Steve is simply glad to have heard it. For the first time ever, he tries to do the same. Because this is not only his secret—those he would give to Robin freely and without any compunctions—but this secret is also Jonathan’s and that means it is something precious. From the way Robin’s eyes widen and slant over to him and then away again, she knows this. Steve looks away from her face and up at the sky.

“You both had lists?” She asks just as softly as Steve had.

“Yeah. It actually started when we were on the same baseball team in fifth grade. Hawkins is small, and even if you hate someone you probably did some sort of summer camp together at some point. We were on the same little league team and our parents were always late to pick us up so we would play with each other on the jungle gym after practice. His mom worked, my mom was on valium, and our dads were pieces of shit so it was always ugly unless Joyce was the one doing the picking up.” Steve waits for Robin to chime in but she’s just looking at him with wide eyes.

“Once my mom almost crashed her car into a parked van, and I told Jonathan that if I died, he could have my bat and glove, and when we were on the bench after Lonnie threw a beer can at his head during one of the games he told me that if he died I should take his cassettes. We never really talked about our families but we both knew that it was bad. All we had to say was something like, give Tommy my sneakers or you take my hat—we both knew what that meant. We wrote them out on the back of my math homework once.” Steve can feel the weight of Robin’s gaze on his face.

She knows that his parents are shit, but he’s never shared the summer of little league with anyone before, not even Nancy though he wonders if she knows now. He’s been too ashamed of it for too long. If he looks into Robin’s eyes right now, he might never finish the story.

“We were little kids, but we knew. No one else was like us. It didn’t last though. We won this big game and our parents weren’t there, so me and Jonathan ate hot dogs with the rest of the team and then hung out in the park for hours. Finally, he told me that his mom had kicked Lonnie out.” Steve has to stop there. He feels his breath rush out in a hard, shuttering sigh.

“Steve?” Robin says gently. Her voice grounds him, and Steve leans back against the windshield draping an arm across his eyes.

“I’m okay,” He says, anchoring himself in the warmth of Robin’s voice. “It’s just that I was so mad at him. He was so glad that Lonnie was leaving, and I think he thought that I would be happy for him, but I was just furious. I don’t even remember what I said but I was just screaming at him. I can still remember how he froze. It was such a dick move. We never talked about it after. He stopped talking to me or talking to anyone.” It surprises Steve that he isn’t crying. He used to think that talking about this would end the world.

“You were just a kid.” Robin says. Steve lets his arm fall back against his side from where it was covering his eyes.

“Doesn’t really make it better.” He retorts, even though he’s whispered those justifications to his ceiling many times before. He expects Robin to keep trying to make him feel better, but instead she just looks at him, considering.

“Did you like him back then?” She asks evenly. Steve looks up at the sky as he thinks about it. He knows where Robin is trying to go with this, and she’s somewhat right, but also so, so, wrong. It’s not repression or any denial of a childhood desire that made Steve snap. Those factors were there, but, in the moment, they hadn’t mattered at all.

“Yes,” He starts slowly, “But that didn’t actually have much to do with it, not in the way that you’re thinking.” Robin frowns at him.

“What do you mean?” She asks.

“I mean that the reason I flipped was because I was so jealous, it was absurd. He got to go with a parent who loved him and the one who was a piece of shit was going away. It was already clear that he had Mrs. Byers, and that she adored him. I think that it killed me that he got to get free and not me.”

“You say that like he’s the one who was leaving, not Lonnie.” Robin observes. It makes Steve cold to his core, she’s exactly right but Steve’s never put it into words before. She has a knack for seeing the patterns and details to make a complete picture, his Robin does. It stills him for a second, as he realizes what she is saying—what has always been true even when he couldn’t recognize it.

“That’s right.” Steve says, a little dumbfounded. “I was scared that he wouldn’t want to stay friends with me if he didn’t have a shit parent too. That he would…leave.”

“So you cut him loose first.” Robin finishes for him.

“Yeah.” There’s a long pause as they both digest this.

“That sucks.” She finally says. And Steve barks out a laugh.

“We haven’t talked about it since. I used the stupid bat that he said he wanted me to have if Lonnie killed him to save his life, and it still didn’t come up.” Steve says, hysterical laughter bubbling behind his tone. All of a sudden, everything about him and Jonathan seems so hilarious. Sitting on the roof of a car in a world with strange mirror realms, Russian spies, and evil American scientists, his obsession with three summer months of childhood seems so stupid.

“Holy shit dude. You are so tragic.” Robin says a smile growing across her own face. Then the two of them are giggling in concert and it escalates into full blown belly laughter. Robin is literally gasping for breath as she grabs at his arm, and tears are leaking from the corner of Steve’s eyes as he cackles.

The situation suddenly seems so ridiculous. A literal monster comes to eat Jonathan and the part that Steve is most stumped by is a little league bat. Finally, the hysteria subsides, and Steve grips Robin’s hand with his own, entwining their fingers.

“All this to say, some of use made lists because of monsters earlier than others.” Steve says with a sigh.

“Can I tell you something?” Robin asks softly, leaning her head on his shoulder.

“Yeah, of course.” Steve replies.

“I don’t have a list of where I want my stuff to go. Not even after the Russians and the Mind Flayer, I just didn’t even think of it.” Robin says. Steve nods in response, letting his chin bump into the crown of her head.

“Do you want to make one?” He asks, genuinely curious.

“Nah. I feel like that only invites the weird shit. Alien monsters are never killing me, I refuse.” When Steve stays quiet, she continues. “What? You don’t agree?” Steve takes another beat to get his thoughts in order. He thinks about Barbra Holland getting eaten while sitting next to his pool, a dripping head full of monstrous needle teeth blooming open like a flower, and how his fear at seeing the flashing lights through Jonathan’s boarded up window had felt so familiar, like he’d known it his whole life.

“Your plan makes sense.” He says to Robin. “I’ve been wondering what would happen when I die for a long time. I bet Billy did too. It just always felt so reasonable—the fact that I would be the one dying—the notion of preparing seemed like a necessity. I think you’re right though, sometimes preparing is inviting. It doesn’t do any good to prepare for monsters, they’ll come or they won’t. I’m guessing that for you, writing out that I should get your tapes just makes you feel like you wouldn’t fight that little extra inch to go on. And I know that you’re against that.”

“You’re somewhat right, but not totally.” Robin says to him slowly.

“What did I get wrong?” Steve asks her.

“You’re right, I feel like it’s one less thing to fight for if I write down my will, but it’s not because I don’t think that preparing for monsters is a good idea or anything like that.”

She takes a deep breath in and out before continuing. “I just don’t want it to be true, and so if I don’t write anything down maybe it won’t be. That thing that chased our car, it’s like my mind can’t even believe that something like that exists. A flesh monster attacked a mall and took over our classmate’s brain.” Her volume rises steadily over the course of the last sentence and by the end she’s gesticulating with her hands.

“Yeah.” Steve responds simply.

“What even is that!” She hisses out. “That thing killed Billy, and we have to give his ex-girlfriend his shit, and I don’t even know what killed him. We just keep using some name from a fucking role-playing game.” Her tone is furious, but Steve can tell how lost she is behind it.

“Yeah.” He says again.

“And no one else knows! Everyone just keeps living their lives, and I want to scream that monsters might stomp the ceiling in, but if I say anything like that, they’ll lock me up in the psych ward.” Her words tumble over each other as she speaks.

“I know.” Steve says. “It sucks.” He knows better than trying to say more. The fear is corrosive; keeping it inside just makes the paranoia worse. Robin groans.

“Do you even feel like the same person? Sometimes I wake up and I feel like all of a sudden I don’t remember who I was before meeting you and breaking Russian codes, and most of the time I love it, but sometimes I just want to scream and scream until I go back in time like Marty McFly.” Robin says plaintively. Steve laughs.

“Yeah. I totally feel that way, but…”

“But?” Robin prompts.

“Because of the monsters I met you, and I’m so glad I met you. I’m so glad I got to talk to Jonathan again and make fun of Dustin. I could have called Jonathan and Nancy crazy. I could have left and tried to forget everything, but I didn’t and I’m always a little gladder for that than I am terrified because of what I gained. Don’t get me wrong, I’m terrified a lot, but I’ve always been scared. I used to be scared of my dad, or scared of looking at guys, or scared of being alone, scared of finding my mom’s corpse. I’ve never not been terrified, but it was like the monsters woke me up. I feel like for so long I was paralyzed but when I was afraid that Nancy and Jonathan were going to die, for the first time in so long I could move.” Steve trails off as Robin sniffles.

“Rob you okay?” He asks.

“Yeah.” She says wetly into his shoulder. “You’re so fucking exceptional Steve Harrington. The monsters were worth meeting you too.”

The two of them don’t say anything after that. There’s nothing much else to say. Instead Steve starts absentmindedly singing along to Fats Domino’s Blueberry Hill as it warbles out of his car speakers, and keeps his hand tucked into Robin’s.

The two of them spend another hour listening to the tape and staring at the California sky before going back inside and passing out in their clothes on top of the shitty motel sheets.

The drive the next day is full of anticipation. The address Max gave them for Matilda’s house is located in El Segundo, so Steve and Robin decide to stop for lunch at a diner that they pass on their drive and workshop opening lines. The news declared Billy’s death a result of rat passed rabies, so Steve and Robin agree to stick with that story. They aren’t sure whether saying that they were friends of Billy’s would be a good idea, and they end up spending their entire time in the diner debating what to present themselves as, with no resolution.

Eventually Steve and Robin find themselves in front of a simple white stucco house with dark red clay tiles on the roof and a dilapidated wreath on the door. Steve quickly glances left at Robin, holding the box, and she nods at him, before he raises his fist to knock. Before one knock can become two, the door flies open, and an exceedingly lovely young woman stares at him and Robin.

She’s petite, with thick brown hair that falls in waves around her shoulders and piercing brown eyes that are so dark they are almost black and rimmed with thick lashes. Her skin is dark and tanned, and she’s wearing overalls with a purple long-sleeved tee-shirt underneath. There’s a ratty blue string bracelet tied around her wrist.

“What.” She snaps.

“Uhh…” Steve says, taken aback “Are you Matilda?” He asks, realizing for the first time that he does not know what Matilda’s last name is supposed to be. Her eyebrows furrow as she takes in him and Robin, and Steve realizes with a foreboding feeling that Robin looks as wrong footed as he does.

“Yeah.” Matilda says shorty. “What do you want?”

“We knew Billy,” Robin starts.

“Hah, that old fuckhead. I’m not interested.” Matilda spits out before moving to close the door. It’s pretty much the take that they were expecting. Steve knows that the opportunity to give her the box will be gone as soon as the door closes, so he blurts out the only thing that he can think of, which might make her stop.

“Billy’s dead.” Every inch of her freezes in place as the blood drains from her expression. The door stops, halfway closed between them as she stares at him with wide eyes.

“He’s dead?” She murmurs, and even though it is a question her voice is flat without any inflection.

“Yeah.” Steve responds, as gently as he can.

“Shit.” She says, closing her eyes briefly. “Was it his dad?”

“No. It was rat rabies.” Robin responds. It sounds absurd when it comes out of her mouth, and Matilda clearly thinks so as well, as she fixes Robin with a flat glare.

“Rat rabies.” She says, her voice totally dead. Neither Steve nor Robin says anything as they shift uncomfortably under her gaze. Luckily, she spots the box that Robin is clutching, and her eyes widen again as she lets it go. “That’s for me isn’t it.” She says.

“Yeah it is. It turns out he didn’t have high expectations for his life expectancy.” Steve replies. Matilda sighs and closes her eyes briefly.

“This is so stupid.” She breathes, resting her head against the doorframe. “Alright, come on in I guess.”

There’s still something hesitant about the way that Matilda steps away from where she blocks the door. It makes Steve enter carefully. Steve thinks about Billy’s glee as he pinned his weight over Steve and brought his fists slamming down onto Steve’s face again and again. He makes sure to slow down more than he normally would and lets Robin move into the house first. He sees something relax in Matilda shoulders as Robin moves in between the two of them and makes sure to keep that situation the same as they move further into the house.

They enter a living room with floral wallpaper and a pastel purple couch. Steve and Robin sit side by side and then place the box on the coffee table between them and Matilda. She eyes it as though it is a live snake ready to strike.

“You guys were friends with him?” She asks, half desperate, half suspicious. Steve shifts a little uncomfortably and trades glances with Robin. She doesn’t seem ready to say anything, so Steve just goes for it.

“Not really… he beat the shit out of me because I was his little sister’s babysitter and wouldn’t let him fuck her over.” Matilda snorts in response.

“Sounds about right.” She says.

“He got better.” Steve offers weakly. Matilda casts a sharp look over him, skeptical at first and then a little more intently as she sees something in Steve’s face as he speaks to her. “It wasn’t everything, and he wasn’t a good guy by any stretch of the imagination, but when everything was on fire at the end, he at least tried.” She nods slowly in response before looking back at the box.

Steve glances at Robin questioningly, wondering if he should elaborate more, but doesn’t say anything further when she gives the slightest shake of his head.

Matilda reaches out and opens the lid of the box for all of them to see inside. Steve doesn’t know entirely what he was expecting but for the most part what he sees wasn’t it. There’s a wrinkled letter with Matilda’s name on it, which is more in line with what Steve was expecting, but the rest of the box’s contents seem to be miscellaneous odds and ends.

At a glance Steve sees some strangely shaped dice, a guitar pick, what looks like a bookend shaped like an elephant along with several cassette tapes without cases. There’re other things in there too like folded bits of paper, but most of it looks like little bits of ephemera.

Matilda opens the envelope. There’s a long silence as she reads the letter stone faced. It doesn’t seem to be that lengthy, but she takes her time. When she gets to the end her eyes skip back up to the top of the letter and she reads it again. When she’s done, she gives a long sigh, setting the letter down and scrubbing a hand over her face.

“Did he ever talk about me?” She asks.

“No.” Robin says. Short and to the point without sounding cruel. Matilda nods. She doesn’t seem sad about it though.

“Billy wasn’t all bad when I first met him. We went to elementary school together. He was actually a really sweet kid before his mom bailed.” She takes a long pause here. “Then she left without him and he wasn’t. He was really angry all the time. He used to get in fights for no real reason just so he could pummel someone else the way he was getting pummeled at home. Our whole friend group was pretty fucked up though so none of us did anything about it. Honestly most of us had our own shit to deal with. We all hung out at the skate parks by the beach and got high or in fights.” She stops talking, staring at the box.

“Where you two dating?” Robin asks, gently without any hint of gossip in her tone. Matilda looks at her for a long moment before grudgingly responding.

“No and yes. We would get high on the beach or in our cars and make out. Sometimes when something happened at home that was really bad he would snap and throw things while screaming at me and then we would make out. He never hurt me though, and I never left him, so for both of us it was a step up. His dad hated that he was friends with me because I’m chicano. He hated most of our friends actually. We were all poor and…” Matilda searches for the word she wants for a moment before sneering out, “ethnic.”

Suddenly Billy’s vicious fury and constant malice towards Lucas makes a little more sense. Steve knows from fragments of conversation and context clues that Max getting away with things that Billy couldn’t had always incensed him.

“When he told me that his dad was moving with his stepmom to Arkansas or whatever. I told him to move in with me or couch surf with our friends. He said that I was stupid and that I was going to get him killed. I told him that he had to choose being with us or going with his family because none of us could keep watching him die by inches. He walked out and we haven’t talked since.” There are dents in the letter from where she’s clenching it in her fist with all her might.

“Sounds shitty.” Steve says.

“We were his best friends.” She murmurs fiercely. “If it wasn’t for that stupid little bitch he wouldn’t have gone.” Robin looks confused, but Steve knows exactly who she’s talking about and his gaze goes hard and cold.

“He treated Max like shit and she still made sure that his stuff got saved. He was an abusive dick. If he cared at all about Max, he had a funny way of showing it.” He says tightly. Matilda meets his eyes without backing down.

“He loved the brat. If she couldn’t appreciate that, it’s her own fault.”

Steve thinks about Billy beating his face in and a car running Lucas off the road. He thinks about fathers who push their sons up against the walls and mothers who drug themselves to sleep. The worst part about all of this is that Matilda is probably right. Love for Billy has rarely been a nice thing or a fair thing; it wasn’t like he knew how to show it. Maybe what he gave to Max was the best he could do. Still Steve can’t help but think that any love that has to be warded off with his nail bat is no better than the empty hunger of the monsters he usually attacks with it.

“Don’t talk shit about Max.” He says. There’s no give in his voice. Matilda gives him a long once over before snorting and breaking their eye contact.

“Pussy.” She says flatly. There’s another icy silence that Robin finally breaks.

“What’s in the box?”

“It’s his junk. Stupid sentimental nothing. He wants me to give it to our friends.”

“Are you gonna?” Robin asks. Matilda takes another long pause.

“We’re going to the beach bonfires and chilling tonight at Dockwiler. I’ll tell everyone about this and bring it then.” She pauses again, before continuing tentatively. “You guys can come along if you want. We usually have a good time, and you knew Billy as much as any of us did. You should come.”

“You sure?” Steve asks, touched in spite of his earlier anger.

“Yeah.” She says quietly.

“Okay.” Steve says back. And that’s it.

Steve and Robin hustle out of the house quickly after that. There’s definitely something a little shell-shocked in the looks that they exchange on the way to Steve’s car.

The second that the doors of the BMW close behind them. Robin is whipping around to face Steve.

“Are we going?” She says.

“You want to go?” Steve asks bewildered.

“Yes!” Robin says, and Steve can only gape at her.

“What part of that made you want to go to a party with these people?” Steve responds completely lost.

“They’re all super fucked up, but it’s so fascinating. Imagine what it’s going to be like to talk to all these people—it’s like a movie for free.” She seems genuine but there’s something a little layered to her tone that gives Steve pause. He knows Robin better than anyone else at this point, and he has a gut feeling about what’s happening here.

“You think she’s hot don’t you.” He says, and Robin’s expression freezes, a little caught out. “Oh my god Rob.”

“It’s not like I’m trying to hit on Billy’s ex-girlfriend I just want to get to know them all better. She survived Billy; she seems really tough.” Robin argues weakly. Steve groans.

“I didn’t like her. She was rude about Max.”

“She didn’t mean to be rude about Max. She was sorry about it. I can tell.” Robin protests.

“She called me a pussy and then invited us to her party.” Steve says flatly. Robin sighs explosively at this and gives him a serious look.

“Consider this, what other shit do you have to do tonight.” Steve pauses considering. The answer is nothing. He knows that if he actually voices some resistance Robin will bail with him, but despite Matilda being rude about Max, there had been something oddly compelling about her clear core of iron and the hard way she’d stared right through him.

“Nothing. Alright I’m in. But first things first, you and me are getting slushies and going to the beach. I refuse to come to LA and not do some fun stuff with sand.” Robin laughs, tossing her head back.

It’s legitimately hot out despite the winter month. Matilda’s house is close to Manhattan Beach, where Steve puts his dad’s credit card to good use on a shopping spree, buying him and Robin ridiculous boardwalk sunglasses and a couple disposable cameras among other things.

It’s shocking how much fun the two of them have on the beaches of Los Angeles. They buy icy drinks from Seven Eleven, and Robin poses while Steve does his best impression of Jonathan, snapping photos of her in her lavender one-piece swimsuit and loose floral romper that they bought from a little oceanfront boutique. Robin returns the favor, and the two of them dissolve into giggles under the bright sunshine as Steve protests.

It’s strange but there’s something about the warmth in the air that makes Steve feel at ease. The city that rolls on for as far as the eye can see makes Hawkins feel very far away. The buildings are all painted with fun colors, and most of the seafront houses have surfboards covered with sand drying on the stoops.

The ocean is the most captivating bit of the whole place. The deep blue water seems infinite, and it glitters almost too brightly to look directly at in the sunshine.

The edge of the ocean crashes down on the sand, and when Steve and Robin lay out their towels the rhythmic booms are more intimidating than Steve thought they would be. He’s been to the Jersey shore before but there’s hardly any waves where he and his parents go. The water there is easy. The Pacific gives him pause.

He and Robin exchange a look.

“Only one thing to do.” Steve says.

“Run in pell mell?” Robin says.

“You know me so well.” Steve replies. “On the count of three?”

“Yeah. One.”

“Two.”

“Three.” “Three.” They say together breaking in a dead sprint toward the water.

It’s fucking freezing. Robin shrieks as a wave smacks into her stomach. All Steve can do is gasp a breath as his bits try to crawl back up inside him.

Somehow with all the warmth in the air, and the beating force of the sun, Steve had expected the water to feel the same. Instead it’s frigid and his entire body locks up with the sudden change in temperature.

Further out in the water, a man in a wetsuit perched on a surfboard laughs at the two of them as Steve shudders and Robin swears before paddling down the beach. A young girl of thirteen in a dive shirt wades in after them, clearly unsurprised by the cold.

“Just dive under a wave,” She calls out, “It’s the only thing that really helps.” She’s the one who dips away then, demonstrating a neat seal dive under the next wave that smacks into Steve and Robin, knocking both of them back a step. The girl makes her way out past the break to where her friends are floating in stiller water.

Steve takes a breath and then follows her instructions. When he does it’s transcendent. The cold is everywhere but it washes over him and through him. Steve has been cold before. He felt like ice that night at the Byers house, that first fall evening where suddenly the monsters emerged. He’s never felt like this before though.

As Steve crashes into the wave headlong the water feels oddly purifying. The cold shocks his whole system, and with a sudden forced adjustment, Steve can’t feel the paranoid tension at the base of his spine that’s been there for as long as he can remember. His back, a little stiff from sitting and driving might as well not exist. He emerges from under the water laughing and sputtering.

The cold isn’t so bad then.

“Just do it!” He calls to Robin, “It’s great.” He dives under an oncoming wave without checking to see if she’s following him. When he surfaces again, feet finding bearing on the sand, Robin is right by his side, pushing her wet hair out of her face.

“Holy shit.” She says laughing. Steve grins at her. The two of them spend a good while jumping over waves. Neither of them is quite brave enough to venture into the deeper water where their feet don’t touch the ground, but in Steve’s mind that’s okay. Both of them know the risks of diving headfirst into bottomless water when you’re not ready to swim.

The two of them get out only when Robin starts having full body shivers. Steve can’t help but wrap his huge bathroom towel that he had swiped from the linen closet around her as the two of them sit in the sun. The sand sticks to his wet legs and swim trunks as he sits next to her, but he doesn’t pay it any mind. Robin ends up falling asleep in the late afternoon sunshine on the beach with her head pillowed on Steve’s towel.

He pets her hair absentmindedly. It’s nice. His mouth fills with the taste of salt as he licks his lips. Steve feels settled in his body.

The whole trip so far was full of tension as he faced Nancy and Jonathan, faced the possibility of losing Robin, the contrastive high of telling Robin about Jonathan, dancing with Park and Eleanor in full view of everyone who might want to look, was almost more ecstatic than he’s ever been. This is the first time all trip it feels like Steve has had a moment to breathe.

In the sunshine, on the sand, Steve feels like he’s floating. They’re so far away from Hawkins that it doesn’t even feel like this beach belongs to part of the same world. It’s strange for Steve to realize how terrified he’s been in the wake of all that fear being gone.

Fear has become such an ingrained part of his existence that Steve isn’t honestly sure what to do without it. Oddly, as he contemplates this potentially transcendent state of being, there’s a twinge of guilt in the pit of his stomach.

It seems disrespectful of everything that’s happened, of Nancy and Jonathan and Dustin, to feel safe. Worse than disrespectful it seems stupid. Steve has never been safe. He wasn’t safe when he played little league, he wasn’t safe when he was a douche in high school, he wasn’t safe when he was with Nancy. He isn’t even safe here and now on this beach with Robin tucked into his side.

Still when he tries to reach for that familiar urgency, that wariness that he usually covers with swagger and a cockeyed assuredness to keep the world slightly distant and observable, there’s nothing there, only the warmth of the sun. He twists the end of one long strand of Robin’s hair around his finger and watches as a tiny drop of seawater makes its way down the side of his hand. It doesn’t feel like there are monsters here.

Steve knows he learned early on that his parents were never going to give him what he wanted. He’s pushed Jonathan away because of fear that Jonathan would do the same, and pushed Nancy away because of his disbelief in the world that she discovered. The unfortunate truth that Steve is just starting to process, is that for all his own stupidity Nancy and Jonathan been all too happy to let him go. Robin is different though.

For some unfathomable, unknowable reason, she seems to have decided that Steve is the person she wants to stick with. Robin lets him see underneath the facades; she lets him into her life, and in doing so wiggled her way past his own walls. She makes him feel safe.

With a sigh Steve lets himself fall backward onto the sand and closes his eyes, feeling the sun beat against his skin. It’s easier than ever before to fall asleep with his hand tangled in Robin’s hair.

Eventually the sun sinks low enough that the tipping point between cool ocean air and warm sun starts to become uncomfortable. He and Robin stumble their way back to the car, stopping to rinse the sand off of them at the beach showers, changing out of their swimsuits and into their comfortable beach clothes. Steve eyes the fog bank that he can see rolling in toward the shore over the water, and tugs on a soft hoodie. Robin follows his lead with one of her warm knit sweaters.

The two of them drive to Dockweiler where Matilda had told them to go, stopping for gas and Slurpee’s on the way. By the time that they get there the sun is low on the horizon, staining the sky with oranges and purples, and the air is full of whips of fog.

It’s not the kind of thick haunted fog that Steve remembers had filled the Hawkins woods during his childhood. There’s no obscuring of his vision, instead all the fog does is turn the air moist and chilled. It’s a quick turn from the strange wintertime warmth of the day.

The parking lot at Dockweiler is at the top of a cliff bluff, and Steve can see the whole beach unfold at the bottom. The bonfires that Matilda had mentioned are immediately obvious. The whole beach near the base of the cliff is dotted with dark black fire pits. There’s hardly anyone on the beach, however. That fact, combined with the bird’s eye view, makes it easy for Steve to spot Matilda manning one of the fire pits nearest to the ocean.

Steve and Robin pick their way down the concrete stairs to the sand. Matilda sees them coming ahead of time, and by the time they make it over to her, whatever conversation was going on before the two of them arrived has ceased.

There are two boys with Matilda, one hovering nervously by her shoulder, the other sitting on a wide blue blanket.

“Hey.” Steve says awkwardly. The fire pit is empty and there’s no sign of wood anywhere when he slants his gaze around. Matilda reads his mind.

“Coraline’s coming with the wood.” She says flatly. “This is Jamie and Dan.” The boy standing next to Matilda waves awkwardly at the name Jamie before the other gives a nod for Dan.

“Billy’s dead huh.” The boy sitting says quietly.

“Yeah.” Robin replies.

“He once pushed me down a flight of stairs at our school.” He says, meeting her gaze with a hard stare.

“Yeah, he beat Stevie unconscious in front of a bunch of kids he was babysitting, but then he helped rescue me from a disaster zone. I don’t really know what that says about him. Do with that information what you will.” Steve glances over to Robin when she’s done talking, that’s a lot nicer than she usually is about Billy.

The rest of the wait is spent in silence as Steve and Robin make themselves comfortable on the sand. Eventually a girl picks her way over to the group carrying a boombox.

“Wood’s in the car.” She says softly, and the two boys float after her to get it as soon as she settles her boombox on a towel.

When they come back down, the group of them are carrying five huge wooden industrial pallets as well as a stack of logs that the girl, Coraline, indicates are for starting the fire in a detached way that reminds Steve of Robin from in the beginning when they had first met.

The sun has gone down at this point, so the four LA friends quietly get to work making the fire while Steve and Robin look on awkwardly.

Once it’s built up Dan turns to the boombox and puts in a tape that he pulls from his pocket. After a moment, strains of The Clash come out of crackling speakers. Despite his thick hoodie and the heat of the fire, a chill goes down Steve’s spine. He wasn’t there for the moments when this song was important, but he knows the lore of it all the same.

Steve notices that Dan’s nails are painted a chipped black. It reminds him of Jonathan for some reason, even though to his knowledge Jonathan has never painted his nails.

“Billy and I were friends in elementary school. We used to say that we were going to make a punk rock band together. His mom used to let us listen to her records in the living room, and in fifth grade we recorded our own songs to tape. When we were in high school Billy destroyed my copies of those tapes.” Dan reaches into his jeans pocket then and pulls out an index card.

Steve sees from across the fire a track list written tightly cramped blue pen though he can’t quite make out the song titles before Dan drops it into the fire.

“Bye Billy. You sucked at the end there, but I miss you I guess.” Dan says before sitting back down.

Matilda stands up next which surprises Steve, for some reason he’d have thought she’d go last.

“Billy and I fooled around in middle school and the beginning of high school before he left.” There’s a long pause and then she laughs wetly. “Bastard slept with my favorite English teacher just to prove we weren’t a couple.” There’s a faint series of chuckles from the circle around her. Matilda’s hand clenches around the ratty knotted string bracelet that she had been wearing when Steve and Robin had first encountered her.

She steps up to the bonfire and opens her hand. The bracelet burns fast.

“Bye Billy.” Matilda says. She sits down abruptly where she had just been standing, butt in the sand.

The two remaining high schoolers exchange a look before the other girl Coraline, rises to her feet. She doesn’t seem to be holding anything.

“Billy was tormented by his father and abandoned by his mother. The two of us surfed together for years until he stopped. He got mean and that boy I grew up with vanished. I started missing that version of him then even though his body was still walking around, and now I won’t ever get a chance to stop.” She sighs and then sits. It doesn’t seem like she has any more to say.

There’s a long pause after that, and Steve can’t help the fact that his eyes drift over to the one boy that remains, Jamie.

Jamie jerks to standing and moves toward the fire, dropping a folded-up note into the flames before saying a word.

“Billy and I were childhood friends, family friends. My dad and his dad were super chummy. We were babies together.” His jaw clenches, and Steve can practically hear his teeth grind.

“We tried to make it better for each other until we couldn’t. My dad left and then it wasn’t enough, I wasn’t enough. He didn’t want things to get better, he just wanted to be in pain.” There’s a thickness to his voice that makes Steve think that this boy in front of him is about to cry. He wants to say something, but he can’t, the story is freezing him in place.

“I would have patched him up. He could have stayed, slept on my couch. I would have taken care of him. I would have helped…” Jamie’s voice trails off and Steve can see the glitter of tears on his cheeks.

At his side he can hear Robin’s breath catch in her throat. Steve feels like he wants to get up and wrap his arms around this boy who is all at once so alien for loving Billy Hargrove, but at the same time so achingly familiar that Steve feels like he knows this story in his bones.

Coraline beats him to the punch. She stands and wraps her arms around the shaking form of Jamie. For the first time, Steve feels an aching regret for the reality of Billy Hargrove's death. He hates that he had to be the one to tell these people.

Eventually the Coralne and Jamie collapse down onto the picnic blanket and the night is quiet except for the wavering sound of The Clash as everyone stares into the fire. Finally Dan offers up a simple, “Anyone want a joint?” Steve is all too happy to agree.

The tension breaks as the group starts passing a joint around. Time goes funny then as everyone starts talking to each other. The higher that Steve gets the more he can only focus on the feel of Robin tucked into his side, even as conversation breaks over and around him. Here and now the trauma and terror of Hawkins feels distant and far away.

“It’s not easy.” Steve says out into the air. “It doesn’t count if it’s easy.” He’s not sure where the words come from, where he’s heard them before. He doesn’t think they come from him.

“What are you talking about?” Robin asks from next to him.

“This whole trip, Nancy, Jonathan, you, Billy, if it had been easy it wouldn’t have meant anything. He’s super dead so he can’t do better, he can’t make anything better, he can’t get over it.” Steve’s eyes flit to where Jamie’s got his head tucked into Coraline’s shoulder while Matilda holds his hand. It makes his heart hurt for them. He can’t believe he feels this way, but it makes his heart hurt for Billy. That stupid, nasty, cruel, brave, brave boy.

Steve tangles his fingers with Robin’s.

“Do you forgive him Rob? Because I think I might, as much as I can.”

“Yeah,” Robin replies softly, “It doesn’t mean what he did was okay, but yeah, I guess I forgive him in spite of it all if that makes sense. He’s dead so you can’t really absolve him of everything, but he tried to do better. In the end he did the best he could, and now he’s gone so he can’t keep making up for the shit he pulled.”

“Yeah.” Steve replies.

“Not us though.” She says energized suddenly. Her head whips around so that the two of them are locking eyes “We’re going to live Steve. We’re going to go to New York and have a fucking amazing time. We’re going to fall in love with weird new people, and do interesting things, and maybe one day we’ll even be able to go into malls at night again.” Robin says and Steve laughs.

“You and me Robin. We’re going to be amazing. I love you.” Steve says. The first person he ever said that to other than his parents was Nancy, not even Jonathan in those sun-soaked days had gotten that. He has the feeling that Robin cherishes it even more for knowing both of those things.

“I love you too dingus.” She squeezes his hand as tight as she can, accepting the joint from Dan when he passes it along and taking a long drag, letting the smoke curl out of her mouth into the air in a continuous, controlled breath. The music pulses in the background.

Steve breathes in and out, letting his eyes trail across the thick fall of Matilda’s brown hair and over the sinuous lines of Jamie’s forearms. There's no way to go back to a time before monsters. There's no way to save Billy or to make sure Robin never takes the scoops job that breaks her security in a monotonous world. There's no way to unlearn that reality is darker and more vicious than Steve could ever have fathomed during those warm, terrifying summer days.

Still he sits in the sand holding Robin’s hand and staring into the fire that’s sending sparks floating up into the moist salty air. For the first time in a long time, Steve isn’t scared at all of what’s coming next.

Fin.

End Notes (Because AO3 is capping my word count):

Hi Everyone. Sorry this update took so long. I lost a bunch of my work when my writing file got corrupted and it really bummed me out and slowed me down.

I wanted to see a world of Steve and Robin being best friends. So I wrote it and maybe dealt with some of my own shit in the process.

This fic, in focusing on their relationship, deals with how people understand their own sexuality, and how people forgive others. I am fascinated by what the world looks like for these people when they get out of Hawkins—the literal hellmouth—and how their relationships with each other simultaneously fracture and are made stronger for sharing a wealth of experiences. I also am a sucker for Steve/Jonathan/Nancy, while simultaneously being very attached to canon. This is a tough position to be in considering that the show is basically one giant set of eighties movie clichés, and pretty much the only deviations have to do with Steve being not a douche after all and Robin being a lesbian.

As an extension of that, this story is what I think canon would look like if Steve were bisexual at a time where bisexuality for men was actually in some ways less understood and than being gay. I wanted Steve to genuinely start to explore what that might mean for him and his own identity, especially considering Nancy and Jonathan and how he interacts with them both.

I think Murry was right on, trauma fuses people together, and Steve fought alongside Jonathan and Nancy in every final fight there was to have. It means something different to Steve than it does for the two of them, especially when we take in seasons two and three of canon where Jonathan and Nancy, for better or worse leave Steve behind, and Steve, for better or worse, pretty much lets it happen.

For my Steve—Jonathan and Nancy are the loves of his life, and his life’s greatest missed opportunity. They are a realization, learning experience, and lost love in his mind which he is trying to reconcile with a very heteronormative 1980’s understanding of sex, gender, and relationships. In contrast, the two of them, frankly, don’t really think about Steve that much at all. On purpose. Because they feel a little bad about how they started their relationship and don’t want to open that can of worms. It makes Robin’s head want to explode. She wishes her best friend had better taste. And also liked himself a little more.

Robin-and-Steve is also a relationship that I find fascinating, and it is the core of this fic and why I wanted to write it. Theirs is the only dynamic in the show that doesn’t in some way or another fall into any number of eighties stereotypes. Mostly this is because Maya Hawke and Joe Keery came up with the iconic Robin-as-Lesbian twist, which added a dynamic that was captivating, and the Duffers would have been utterly incapable of thinking of because it didn’t come out of either Spielberg or Hughes’s movies. I digress. Robin and Steve as a pairing is the experience of so many people; we meet someone in a twist of circumstances that we are drawn to and our worldview opens up and expands.

Robin is someone who has spent so long hiding something central to her core-self out of a deep fear and the understanding that she did not want to be a lesbian in 1980’s Hawkins. I think we see that in canon Robin plays up her individuality and quirkiness because it hides who she actually is as an individual. In the show, Steve is the first person who totally broke that down and saw her and accepted her without question. I think the moment of being seen always forges a connection. Robin understands that their relationship is completely unique and special even if Steve doesn’t. In her mind, he is the single best person she has ever or could ever know, because she told him that she liked a girl named Tammy Thompson and it took him less than a second to respond with a joke that embraced her totally and completely. Being seen and accepted by a single person can make all the difference in an existence consumed and defined by the fear of being exposed. Robin is ride or die for Steve, she will never ever let him go.

Meanwhile Steve is grappling with who he is and how he relates to the world. He doesn’t understand what makes him so special to Robin, or even that he is special, and for him it taints that best-friends-soulmate-lyfe that Robin is ready to jump headfirst into. Not to mention the simultaneous internalized homophobia that Steve has to battle inside his own head. It’s easy to forget when we look at that lovely Joe Keery face, but Steve is 18. He’s still got so much to figure out and so much to learn. He thinks he missed out on the chance to have someone who really is meant for him, and in exchange he got to have Robin. He loves Robin with all his heart but thinks that he’ll hold her back and it will be Nancy moving on 2.0. Luckily Robin is awesome, and she’s going to glomp on and never let go.

I wanted the two of them to go on a trip and figure out what they meant to each other; so I gave them a quest: the two of them need to observe the last rights according to Mad Max and deliver Billy back to California. Here we digress, because Billy is a divisive topic in this fandom.

My take: He’s an abusive, homophobic, racist, shitbag who became that way for some really clear reasons. Those reasons are not an excuse.

This fic is about the process of transformation in people, for good or bad. When we make choices, we shed pieces of ourselves, and Billy Hargrove made a lot of bad choices after he left his happiness and hope on the beaches of California. He tried to stop the evil in the end, and he tried to save Max even though she was the physical representation of everything unfair to him in life. As Steve notes in my fic, our actions for good don’t excuse our actions for bad, but our actions for bad don’t cheapen our actions for good, and even shitbags deserve to be mourned by people who loved them. A Beliez says in “Angels of America: Perestroika” of Roy Cohen: “He was a terrible person. He died a hard death. So maybe…A queen can forgive her vanquished foe. It isn’t easy. It doesn’t count if it’s easy”.

Steve and Robin have to decide how they want to live in the wake of everything Hawkins has given them. Deciding to forgive Billy is one step in that process. It is also an acknowledgement that they are mourning who they were before the world threw them at the mercy of monsters. Grief and transformation go hand in hand because when we grow we shed who we once were. We always mourn that loss of ourselves at one point or another; either incrementally bit by bit or in one huge fell swoop. We heal from that pain by the gift of the future. Also sometimes by road trips.