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“Robin, come on, I’m starving, you gotta let me in.”
“No, dingus. You just fed on me four days ago. I’m all drained out. Go ask Nancy.”
Steve whines, banging the back of his head against Robin’s front door. His entire body vibrates; his stomach doesn’t ever growl anymore, given that it doesn’t really work properly. Instead, when he gets thirsty, his entire body just starts thrumming with hunger.
Guiltily, he turns around to rest his forehead against the cold wooden door. He thanks whatever God exists that the sun had at least gone down, no longer burning another irritating rash onto the back of his neck. Rashes and scars don’t mix well. “I can’t,” He admits.
“Why not?” Robin calls from the other side, her teasing voice ringing out through the door. Despite himself, Steve smiles. “Thought it was her turn for blood duty.”
“Eddie got hungry today too.”
“Greedy asshole. He should learn to wait his turn.”
“You’re tellin’ me! Rob, c’mon, you’re gonna let me die out here?”
Silence. Steve strains to hear, even with his handy dandy extra hearing, and then he hears Robin sigh dramatically. “Fine, get in here. But try not to go overboard, I have a rehearsal tomorrow and I can’t pass out from lack of blood flow—”
Steve barely even listens to her admonishing— he’s throwing the door open excitedly before she even finishes talking. He knows what she’s asking, though, and he doesn’t need to be told twice to be careful when feeding from her.
Just once, when she’d first let him drink from her, he’d taken too much and she’d passed out. If it hadn’t been for his enhanced hearing, he’d have been worried that she was dead, but her heartbeat’s loud thumping in his ears when he’d listened for her pulse was his only saving grace. Now, Steve makes sure never to take too much, no matter how hungry he is.
Fuck, though, he’s hungry.
Robin, having thoughtfully taken a step backward to dodge the way he swings the door open, gives a shy, nervous wave, and Steve curbs his excitement. He places a thoughtful hand on her wrist, thumbing over the sensitive scar tissue they both share. “Thank you, Robin, seriously. I, uh— I’ll talk to Nancy after this, kay? Me and her, we’ll figure something out. Me and Eddie don’t wanna keep taking from you guys.”
Something deep and reflective flashes through Robin’s eyes, but she’s quick to replace it with a smirk and raised eyebrow. “Pssh. Yeah, you’re absolutely ruining our lives by taking our blood every once in a while. Whatever am I gonna do?”
Steve rolls his head back as Robin begins leading them to her kitchen counter, groaning exaggeratedly. “Well, jeez, Robin. Sorry I tried to be reassuring and thoughtful. I could just drink your blood and dip out afterward, but I choose to stick around and buy you ice cream.”
“Yeah, yeah, you know I’m messing with you.” Robin waved her hand, before pulling Steve closer to her and holding up her wrist. “Now, c’mon, just get it over with. There’s still leftovers in the fridge and I’m gonna need ‘em after this. You’re watching a movie with me while I eat.”
Steve nods, gingerly taking Robin’s wrist and gripping it softly. “‘Course,” He replies, but he isn’t really paying attention anymore. His mouth is already watering, and he can’t help but lick his lips over his unnaturally sharp fangs— and then remembers that doing so cuts his tongue. Ouch. Fuck.
Ignoring the slight piercing pain of his own stupidity, he gives Robin one last look of reassurance before he sinks his teeth into her wrist.
Robin winces— she used to fidget and whine and yell at him the whole time, rambling off nonsense to distract herself from the pain, but over time she’s built up a tolerance. Now she only rambles sometimes.
Tonight, it seems, is not one of those nights, and instead, Robin stays silent as Steve sucks at her wrist, her breathing heavy and pained as she grasps his free hand with her own. Steve knows that Robin hates needles, hates hospitals, knows from experience and constantly stabbing himself with his own fucking teeth that they hurt, so he always tries to be as gentle as possible.
They stand there for a while, Steve doing his best not to take too much too fast. Maybe if he were less hungry, he might have realized he’d heard footsteps. Robin’s labored breaths are pretty loud, but even with normal ears (which he didn’t have, before this; Nancy had gotten the worst of it, but both he and Jonathan has lost some of their hearing too, the day they’d shot a gun at the Demogorgon with no way to muffle the deafening sound), he’d be able to notice the annoying, clumsy footsteps of a teenager he could recognize anywhere. Or at least his loudmouth rant, going off presumably into his walkie-talkie.
But he’s so absorbed in drinking from Robin that he isn’t able to do anything about any of this information until it was slamming the door open behind them. Dustin Henderson walks into Robin Buckley’s house at eight PM on a Friday night, and Steve mentally kicks himself for forgetting that Dustin is like a parasite on Friday nights; They had better entertain him, or he’ll make himself everyone’s problem.
“Robin, you here? Steve wasn’t answering and I have a new place I wanna check out— Holy shit!”
That gets Steve to break his mouth off of Robin’s wrist, and she lets out a pained sound as his teeth slip out of her skin. Dustin’s staring at them, eyes wide, flicking between Steve’s most-likely bloody mouth and Robin’s wrist, which starts bleeding profusely. Steve slowly glances back to Robin and realizes her expression is still pained, because usually they have procedures for this, they have aftercare and bandages and disinfectant because Robin was always paranoid about rabies because sometimes Steve still has to feed on animals.
And in these few short seconds, Steve realizes that this must look very, very concerning to Dustin.
“Uh—”
“ What are you doing to her ?!” Dustin’s voice is doing that thing where it shrieks three octaves higher than normal, and Steve winces, holding his hands up in surrender. His left fingers are bloody because they were holding Robin’s wrist, and shit , that isn’t helping his case.
Out of the corner of his eye, he can see Robin recovering, coming back to her senses as blood flow returns to normal in her body. She blinks, and starts to realize the urgency of the situation when she sees Dustin. As she scrambles for a towel to throw over her wrist, Dustin extends his walkie as far as it can go and starts screeching.
“Everyone! This is a Code Red. I repeat, a Code. Red . Steve has been turned to the dark side, and he’s hurting Robin, I need all available party members to get over to her place right now —”
Steve lunges forward and snatches the walkie out of his hand, shouting and waving his hands. “Hey, hey woah, Henderson, chill! It’s me, it’s Steve! I’m not hurting Robin, see? She’s fine!” Steve paused, then did a double-take as he looked back towards Robin. “You’re fine, right, Rob?”
Robin waved dizzily as she leaned against her fridge, completely ignoring the blood dripping down her arm. Steve shook his head. So much for that.
Dustin had stopped screaming, at least, but he held out his hands defensively in front of Steve, glancing back and forth between him and Robin. Steve’s technically-undead heart dropped, just a little bit, at seeing his best friend, someone like a brother to him, be afraid of him.
Swallowing thickly, Steve did his best to wipe the blood off the corners of his lips, and then he raised his hands again. “It’s me, Dustin. I’m not— I would never hurt Robin. I won’t hurt you, either. I was just… hungry,” He mumbles.
It’s the wrong thing to say.
“And you’re eating Robin ?!” Dustin’s eyes widen again, and he pushes past Steve to get to Robin’s side, grabbing at her wrist. Robin groans in pain and yanks her hand away from the fifteen year old’s clumsy grip. “I don’t know about you, Steve, but that looks pretty damn hurt!”
“I am not eating Robin, I—” Steve combs his hands through his hair, looking towards the ceiling. At least Dustin has seemed to decide he’s no longer a threat for now. But the way he was still holding himself in front of Robin protectively, as if his puny little teenage body could stop Steve if he tried, showed that he still didn’t trust him. Did he think Steve was flayed, or something? The Flayed had never acted like this, according to Nancy.
“Robin, just— Tell him you’re fine, so he stops worrying, please! I need to get you some damn bandages before you bleed out.” Steve starts towards the bottom left drawer, but Dustin points at him, eyes narrowed.
“No!” He shrieks, and Steve winces again. “No, you stay right there until I figure this shit out.”
Steve glares at Dustin, but obliges nonetheless, hands coming to rest behind his head as Dustin turns to Robin. He starts whispering to her, but it’s pointless, because Steve can hear what he’s saying anyway, even without super hearing. The kid is so fucking loud.
“Are you actually okay?”
“Mmhmm— I will be. Just a lil’ bit dizzy, for a bit, and then I’ll be back to normal. Hey, grab me those bandages, will ya? I don’t wanna bleed all over my parents’ hippie carpeting.”
A pause, and then Dustin was rustling through the cabinets until he found the bandages. Steve chuckled to himself in disbelief— This was it, it was over. Dustin was going to think he drained Robin dry and left behind a shell of her former self.
“Hey, get her the disinfectant too, dumbass. If she dies because of an infection then that’s on you, not me. Jeez.”
Dustin turns to look at him with narrowed eyes, before relenting and grabbing the baby wipes they keep for such occasions. Steve watches him fumble with the materials, and it pains him because Robin shouldn’t have to fix herself up just because Dustin doesn’t know how.
“Alright, that’s enough, just lemme—”
“Hey, no! Steve, I said to stay there!”
“Yeah, I heard ya, Henderson! But you don’t know how to clean up after I feed, and I do, so just shut up and let me make sure she’s alright, okay? I didn’t exactly get to finish before you busted your way in here.”
That gets Dustin to shut up, and he finally takes a step back. “Thank you,” Steve sighs, when Dustin finally backs down, and he gets to work on wiping away the remaining blood on Robin’s wrist. It’s mostly stopped bleeding, and Robin seems to be getting ahold of herself again, but Steve would rather be safe than sorry, especially when the scars from the vines are right next to the puncture wounds.
As he works he can feel Dustin’s eyes boring into the back of his skull, and he glances back at the younger child. “I can feel you staring. What— what are you even doing here anyway, man? Isn’t it past your bedtime?”
“It’s fucking,” Steve just knows that Dustin is checking his watch to get an exact time, “eight twenty-three. I don’t even have a curfew.”
“And the world would be better if you did.” Steve mutters.
“I think you’re deflecting, actually,” Dustin retorts, and Steve is only a little grateful that they seem to be falling back into their usual pattern. It means not all hope is lost for his little child friend’s faith in him. “I’ve yet to receive any explanation for why I found you canine-deep into Robin’s wrist. Unless it was some sort of kinky shit, in which case, ew , get a room, I thought you two weren’t dating—”
“Okay, first of all, Henderson, gross , okay? Never say the word kinky ever again. Second of all, we were in a room by ourselves, before you showed up—” Robin steps on his foot in a warning, and he hisses as he finishes tying off her bandage. “And third of all, no, me and Robin are not dating! We’re—”
“Strictly platonic, I got it.” Dustin crows.
“You sure? Because I don’t know if I say it enough times a day for the number of times you keep asking, dingus.”
They both turn their heads to face Robin, who finally seems to be put together enough to take part in the conversation again. She waves, eyebrows raised expectantly, and nods. “Yeah, I’m still here, guys. Remember me?”
“You’re okay!” Dustin giggles, pushing Steve away and running up to hug Robin tightly.
Robin, to her credit, hugs him back, though she still looks a bit surprised. “Uh, yeah, I’m fine. I’ve been fine the whole time, Dustin. Why don’t you just hear Steve out, huh? I have to eat right now or I’m going to pass out from blood loss, and I can’t afford to miss out on band rehearsal tomorrow— being the only french horn player isn’t cheap, you know.”
Steve can almost hear the beginning of a rant forming on Robin’s tongue, so he sends her a subtle nod towards the fridge, and she catches his eye and nods back. Dustin looks at him expectantly as he goes to pick up the walkie Steve had tossed aside.
“Well?” He sits down on Robin’s worn-out couch, crossing his arms.
Steve rolls his eyes and gives one last glance towards Robin as she opens the fridge.
“You sure you’re okay, Rob?”
“M’all good, dingus. Please go explain yourself to Dustin before he and his little band of teenagers try to kill you, because I do not want to have to be the one to arrange your funeral. Nancy would kill me.”
“Right.” Steve drawls, but there’s no more avoiding the inevitable, as Dustin calls out his name again. With no other choice, Steve crosses the few feet of space to Robin’s living room, which is really just a couch and a TV sitting on a colorful desk. Robin’s hippie parents were weird, but they were also out of town a lot, so it was a great place to hang out and smoke. Well, it was, until Steve couldn’t smoke anymore.
As Robin begins to tinker with various pots and pans, Steve sits down across from Dustin on the couch. He opens his mouth, and then shuts it again.
“Steve?” Dustin prompts.
Steve sits there, jaw hanging open as he nervously licks at his fangs, and then shrugs. “I dunno, man. I’m a vampire. Or a uh, a Demo-vamp. That’s what me and Ed— Me, that’s what I’ve been calling it.”
Nice save. He figures that maybe it wasn’t a good idea to mention anything about Eddie or Nancy yet, that they were all in on the arrangement. If Dustin knew both he and Eddie had been drinking from both Nancy and Robin for at least a month, he’d probably stop humoring Steve altogether.
“A vampire.” Dustin says, in that tone of voice he uses for when he doesn’t really believe what someone is saying. It’s a tone of voice Steve is quite familiar with.
“Yeah, man, a vamp. Is that so hard to believe? After all the shit with the Upside Down? That maybe— Maybe I just have to drink blood to survive, now, for the rest of my life?!”
He shouts the last bit a little louder than necessary, and Dustin flinches. He hears Robin chuckle from the kitchenette, her voice trailing through across the room in a sing-songy fashion. “Careful, little Stevey. Don’t break him.”
Dustin is still speechless, eyebrows furrowed in confusion. Steve waves his hands around slightly. “I mean, c’mon man, you just saw me drinking from Robin… Is it that hard to believe?”
“No, no, it’s not, I guess, just…” Dustin shakes his head, pressing his fingers into his temples. “Why Robin? Why’re you… drinking her blood? Doesn’t it hurt?” He calls out the last bit to Robin specifically, and she hums non-committedly in response.
Steve hangs his head. “I mean… I try not to. But animals can only get me so far, and I’m not trying to destroy the freakin’ economy or whatever.”
Dustin squints, and Robin chimes in from behind. “ Ecosystem , dumbass.”
“Yeah, that, whatever,” Steve waves Robin off, and she scoffs, her footsteps getting louder as she sits down next to Steve with a plate full of leftover homemade spaghetti that he’d made for her last time he’d come over. Steve looks at her mutedly, his words ridden with guilt. “Sometimes I need more, or else I just end up… starving. It sucks.”
“Eh, it’s not all bad, Dustin, don’t worry,” Robin points her fork at him before shoving a mouthful of noodles into her mouth, and she’s only halfway finished chewing before she starts speaking again. Steve rolls his eyes. “You get used to the pain after the first couple times, and really it’s kinda cool, because who else could say they got bit by a vampire and lived, right? Multiple times, nonetheless! And besides, it’s not just me that’s supplying all of the blood anymore, or else I’d probably be dead three times over. Nancy helps out too, and it’s a lot more evenly balanced that way—”
“Nancy’s in on this?!” Steve winces as Dustin stands up again, pointing at Steve accusingly. “You drink from her too???”
“I was getting to that ,” Steve gives a pointed glare to Robin, who shrugs sheepishly and stuffs her face some more. He looks back to Dustin and crosses his arms. “Sometimes, yeah.”
“But I thought you mostly drink from animals.”
Steve tilts his head at Dustin. “What?”
“If it’s just you, and you mostly drink animals’ blood, then why do you need Nancy and Robin?”
He and Robin exchange a glance. “Yeah, uh— Well, it’s… Not just me. Who needs to drink blood, that is. Munson’s a Demo-vamp, too.”
“What?!” And, yep, the screaming is back. Steve covers his ears, before pointing at the couch and gesturing at Dustin to sit back down.
Dustin obliges, but doesn’t stop yelling. “Eddie? Our best friend Eddie? He’s a vampire too? Is that why he went M.I.A a couple weeks ago?”
Steve nodded.
Dustin cradled his head in his hands. “Oh my god. I’m surrounded by vampires.”
Steve huffs, patting him on the back. “Nope, it’s, uh, just the two of us, man. As far as we can make it out, it’s ‘cuz of those damn demobats. If they bite you for long enough, they sorta just… infect you with their bloodlust, or whatever.”
Dustin lifts his head, looking at Steve with pity. At least it’s no longer fear or distrust. “Really?”
“‘S our best guess.” Steve shrugs. “A- Anyway, doesn’t really matter. Either way, me and the freak have been trying our best not to simultaneously starve and drink Hawkins to death, for like, a month. Think we’ve been doing a pretty good job, so far, and most of it’s thanks to Robin and Nance.”
Dustin nods softly, finally seeming to understand the gravity of Steve’s situation. They all sit in silence until Dustin stands up and walks over to Steve. Steve stares at him, eyebrows raised, and then Dustin hugs him.
“‘M sorry I yelled at you, man. And that I thought you were eating Robin. And that I thought you were dating her again.”
Robin chuckles beside them, and as Steve belatedly hugs Dustin back, she wraps an arm around them as well. “I’ll accept your apology for that last one.”
Finally, they pull apart, and Steve feels like he can breathe a sigh of relief. Until Dustin opens his fat mouth again. “But… You know this isn’t sustainable, right, Steve? You guys feeding on Robin and Nance, I mean. Like… eventually their health is going to start dropping due to sustained blood loss.”
Steve looks over at Robin, and her face pales for a second before she shakes her head and goes back to eating. Robin preferred to live in denial in times of uncertainty. Steve pats her on the back and shakes his head.
“I- I know, man. Me and Nance, we’re working on that. We’re trying to think of other solutions.”
“Good. Because—”
Whatever Dustin was about to say gets interrupted, because Steve’s super hearing senses tip him off to the sound of bikes, and he stands abruptly. Several bikes, and shouting voices, skidding in the dirt and yelling at each other as they stampede towards the house.
Dustin tilts his head, unable to hear the approaching hurricane at first, but then he realizes who’s coming. He looks at the walkie he’d left sitting on the couch, and then blanches. “Aw, shit. Robin, your cavalry’s coming.”
Robin squints in confusion, but Steve’s up and pacing, desperately trying to figure out how not to get tackled by the four angry teenagers approaching fast and quick.
“Damn it, Henderson, you just had to call for backup, didn’t you?!”
“I thought you were killing Robin!”
“Yeah, well, I wasn’t!”
“I know that now! How are we gonna explain that to them?!”
They get Robin to explain it to the rest of the party.
Not before Lucas tackles him, though. When the kids slam open the door, Dustin is standing guard in front of Steve, ready to stop any and all attacks. But Lucas is a big, tall dude now, not the scrawny prepubescent teen he used to be, so when he immediately dives for Steve, looking absolutely pissed, Dustin just dodges out of the way. It’s nice to know he’s loved.
Before Lucas is able to start punching him or whatever, Dustin and Robin pull him off. That gets the whole group to stop yelling and trying to kill him right away, but none of them drop their makeshift weapons and slingshots. And knives— Where did Max get a straight-up knife?!
Robin begins a long-winded speech on how Steve and Eddie found themselves in a new vampirical predicament, and Steve is there to give a demonstration of his newfound sharp fangs. After that, it doesn’t take much convincing, and eventually the kids drop their weapons and apologize.
By the end of it, Max had still looked like she wanted to murder Steve for laying a hand on Robin, but even she gives in eventually. Soon, Steve has his entire little gaggle of teenagers surrounding him, wanting to know more about his new powers. Mike keeps trying to prick his fingers against Steve’s teeth, Erica’s kicking him to see if it hurts ( it does ), Lucas thinks it’s cool as hell and won’t stop asking questions.
Whatever plans Dustin had wanted them for were long forgotten, and the party instead went with just mulling about in Robin’s house as Steve explained to them various aspects of his new abilities and weaknesses. Eventually, it was too late to justify having teenagers over, and they sent all of them on their way back home.
When the last of them finally make their way out the door, Steve shuts it with an overcompensating slam, and collapses onto Robin’s couch. She chides him for the volume, but is quick to all but lay down on top of him.
Steve wraps his hands around her and hums. Robin leans her head against his chest, but Steve knows she doesn’t hear a heartbeat there anymore.
“He’s right.”
“Hm?” Robin fidgets, fingers beginning to twist the rings she wears just slightly.
“Dustin’s right. About this not being sustainable. He’s right, and Nancy’s right too— We just need to figure out a better way to get food. I can’t keep doing this to you, Robin.”
“I told you, it’s fine, dingus.”
“Yeah, you keep saying that, but what happens when it isn't fine? When I take too much, or you can’t stand to lose more blood? We need to find better ways to feed, because I can’t imagine your scrawny little body can take much more of this.” He pokes at her stomach, and she chuckles, squirming on top of him.
“Okay, first of all, ouch. I’m not scrawny, I’m just tall. And second of all,” She shifts, leaning up to stare down at him seriously. “You’d do the same for me, wouldn’t you?”
“Of course.” Steve stares back devotedly. “In a heartbeat.”
He doesn’t realize the irony in his words until after he says them, and Robin cracks a smile as she lays back down. She grabs his hand and covers it with her own.
“That’s what I thought. Then, ‘til we do figure out some other solution, I’m going to keep being your blood bag or whatever dumb name you can think of to describe this weird ass situation as. Because it’s either that, or you starve, Steve, and I’m not going to settle for that, either.”
Steve nods, grasping Robin’s hand tightly. “Yeah. Yeah, okay, Robin. Thanks. Goes without saying, but uh, I really appreciate it. All of it.”
“Obviously.”