Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

If there was one thing Steve Harrington loved, it was a competitive sport. Basketball, baseball, hockey. He loved them all, had played most, and throughout his life had been to more professional sporting events than he could count. However, nothing he'd witnessed, not even the Superbowl he'd gone to with his dad, had come close to the exhilaration he got watching Robin now. She sped around the makeshift rink, roller-skates strapped to her feet, shoulder checking women into the boards, dodging elbows to the face, and sneering out insults as good as she got.

She looked good out there, in the green and gold of the Hot Shots, long legs eating up the rink. It wasn’t long ago that she’d have fallen over just as easily as she’d have knocked someone down, but three years in, she was at the top of the sport. For someone who tripped over air if she thought about her feet too much, on wheels she was grace itself. It was probably a little bit narcissistic of him to think that, seeing as he was her coach, but it was her hard work that had gotten her here. He was just along for the ride at this point.

And, he admitted as he watched a gorgeous brunette from the opposing team take out one of the Hot Shots at the knees, the view wasn't bad either. The brunette glanced into the seats as she skated away, saw him looking and shot him a wink. Most of the skaters were more likely to sneer in his, or any man's, direction, but a few didn't mind a fan of the male persuasion. Steve grinned at her as he settled into his seat.

He spent the next few minutes enjoying the current jam; Robin wasn't in this round, but he saw her getting ready to sub in. He had a beer in the cup holder of his seat and a bucket of cheap arena popcorn in his lap, slathered in artificial butter. He was going to have to add an extra couple miles to his run tomorrow to make up for it, but popcorn and beer were necessities at a roller derby. He tossed a handful of popcorn into his mouth just as Robin took to the rink, and tried not to get annoyed when some jackass sat down directly in his line of sight. There were other empty seats on either side, with the same view, but this guy had to choose the one directly in front of Steve. It wasn’t like this place had stadium seating, so the dude was right in Steve’s way.

Biting back an annoyed groan, Steve shifted over two seats himself; his row was almost empty, and he could still get a good view if he moved. It was better than making a scene and missing this jam entirely; two minutes went by quickly, and he hated missing any of Robin’s outings as blocker. His Birdie was vicious when on defense, her. He had bruises of his own to prove it, from training with her in between matches. The memory of the last time she'd knocked him on his ass made him grin, and lean forward to get a better view of the fun on the rink.

From this angle, every time Steve moved to watch the skaters go past, he caught sight of the jackass’ profile. There was something familiar about it, but the guy kept shifting away just enough that all Steve could make out was the curve of his cheek and the obscene amount of freckles. As the minutes ticked past, and one jam became the next, Steve found he was studying the other man more than watching the derby, and when it finally clicked who it was he felt a flood of conflicting emotions that it had taken so long.

They hadn’t spoken, really spoken, since '86, and the years since then had filled Tommy’s face out: his cheeks had lost their roundness and his chin had sharpened.

His shoulders got really broad.

The stray thought caught Steve off guard, but not as off guard as the first time he’d had a thought like that about Tommy. They’d been thirteen then, and Steve had been struck by the urge to put his arm around Tommy's shoulder. They'd been watching a movie—some stupid horror flick and Tommy had screamed when the killer jumped out with the chainsaw—and Steve had thought it might be nice to comfort his friend the same way he might a girl. Then he'd shoved that feeling so far down inside that he hadn’t thought about another guy like that again until almost seven years later.

What was Tommy doing here?

He shook off the memories, tried to focus on the present and the fact that if Tommy Hagan of all people was sitting here in Buffalo, New York, watching a semi-professional roller-derby match, that had to mean--

It took a minute, but there she was. Wearing the bright pink and black of the Bubblegum Beasties, was Carol Perkins, her red curls pulled into pigtails beneath the pink helmet. As soon as he saw her, as if she sensed him, their eyes met. Her pretty, pointed face curved into a sly grin, and she picked up speed. Steve almost closed his eyes but didn’t have time as Carol full-body tackled Robin, sending both of them into the rink boards.

As it happened, Tommy turned in his seat, the brown eyes Steve had, at one point, known as well as his own, sparkling with mischief.

“Hey, Harrington. How’s it hanging?”

---

Robin didn't remember the end of the match after she was slammed into the boards by someone in pink and black, with red curls sticking out from beneath her helmet. There was something familiar about her, and Robin shook off her first thought. There was no way Vickie would be here—last Robin knew she was in Seattle, settled down with a long-term boyfriend and a water dog of some kind. It took her a few seconds—longer than it should have—to shake off the tackle, and get back into the field. By the time she had, the Bubblegum Beasties had scored twice, and the whistle sounded to indicate the end of the match.

The Hot Shots groaned, Susan shoulder checking Robin on their way off the rink. "Get your head out of your ass next time, Bucks. We shoulda had this one." It wasn't an aggressive shoulder check, but it wasn't a friendly one either. Susan was not a graceful loser.

Susan wasn't graceful about a lot of things, Robin thought, slinging herself onto a bench to undo her skates. She should have listened to Steve; he'd said it was a bad idea to sleep with someone on the team. "That never ends well, Robbie. Trust me." But she'd thought to herself what did he know. He was a guy, and it wasn't like he'd ever slept with a teammate, and besides, she'd slept with plenty of women and remained friends with them after. Susan shouldn't have been an exception.

And yet—

She was pulled out of her thoughts by someone else coming to sit on her bench. Right next to her. Close enough that she could smell the orange blossom scent of their lotion. She glanced out of her peripheral vision and saw the black and pink of the Bubblegum Beasties, and a flash of red hair. There was that feeling of familiarity again, like Robin should be able to place the face with a name, but she was coming up empty without a full look at the other woman.

"You know, I'm not Medusa. You're not going to turn to stone if you look right at me, Buckley." The woman's voice dripped with sarcasm, amusement, and something else Robin couldn't place. And she knew her name. "Though I have been accused of hiding snakes in my hair before. In Tommy's defense, he was very high, and I might have planted the idea in his head."

Tommy. Red hair. Words sharper than any knife. The name clicked with a sudden violence, and Robin turned to look at Carol Perkins for the first time since high school. The last time they'd been in the same room together, it had been over Steve's hospital bed, after Starcourt. They hadn't talked, just made eye contact for an uncomfortably long time, before Carol nodded and slipped out the door.

It was the one secret Robin had never told Steve.

"Perkins? What the hell are you doing here?"

"Kicking your ass at roller derby, I thought that was obvious."

"Ha ha," Robin said, with a deadpan glare at Carol. "Seriously. This is weird, right? It's definitely weird. To run into you here. After all these years. I mean, I've never seen you at one of these before, and we've skated against the Bubblegums before—"

"Take a breath, Buckley. The league schedule is publicly available, along with the roster. Tommy and I needed a neutral place to arrange this little reunion, so let's just say me joining this team was the quickest way to make sure our paths crossed." Carol smirked. "And okay, maybe I didn't officially join the team, but what can I say. It looked fun, and there was an extra uniform lying around. How'd I do for my first match?"

Robin could only stare, Carol's explanation providing more questions than it did answers. "You don't hit like it was your first match." Robin winced; that hadn't been what she intended to say. The words had just slipped out, the way they always did around attractive women.

Carol smirked. "Well. Full-body tackling other women? That I'm basically a pro at." Her smirk left nothing to interpretation, and Robin felt her entire body flush. "I think maybe I'll keep it up, once this is all over."

"Once what's all over?" Robin asked, striving for a semblance of normalcy; she didn't want Carol to know what sort of effect she had on her. She also decided to ignore all the parts of the story that didn't make sense—which was most of it—and focus on the most pressing bit. "But what are you doing here, in Buffalo? Steve heard from his dad that you and Tommy were engaged and living in Boston. Which he heard through Tommy's dad. The dad grapevine, I guess."

Steve didn't have regular contact with his parents, because Richard and Diane rarely returned his calls. However, every so often one or the other of them would remember they had a son, start up semi-frequent phone calls that lasted just long enough for Steve to get his hopes up that things had changed, and then they'd forget him again. It infuriated her each time, to see the way he'd lock into himself after it happened, try to brush it off as just one of those things:

They're very busy people, Robs, and I'm a grown man. It's not reasonable to expect weekly chats with Mommy and Daddy. The words sounded like Richard and Diane, not Steve, but Robin had long learned where to pick her battles.

She was saved from getting lost in her petty dislike of Steve's parents by a look that crossed over Carol's face at the mention of both Steve and Tommy's dads, like she was having thoughts along the same line as Robin was.

"Actually, it's Chicago now."

Chicago? "Steve and I are in Chicago." They'd moved there after Robin finished undergrad, planned to get established over the summer, and then Robin would start the graduate linguistics program at the University of Chicago in the fall and try to talk Steve into a course or two at one of the many community colleges in the city. Robin had been collecting brochures ever since they moved there.

"Did you know that Harrington and Hagan Associates just opened a branch there too?"

Robin blinked, trying to follow Carol's train of thought. "No. Steve hasn't heard from his parents in a few months."

Carol snorted. "Wow, I'm so surprised, that's like, such a shocker," she said, Valley girl inflection given with deadpan delivery in a way that had Robin unable to hold back a laugh. "They always did like to show up just long enough to fuck him up, then disappear for months before doing it all over again." She cocked her head as she studied Robin, and Robin had to fight the urge to squirm. "But I don't have to tell you that, do I?" She sounded thoughtful, and like she didn't need an answer, but Robin felt compelled to give one anyway.

"No. They seem to have a sixth sense about when he's doing well, and call right about that time." She made a face, and wondered if she should be telling Carol any of this. Steve had always been pretty closed-mouthed about his friendship with Carol and Tommy, but what little she'd dragged out of him about both over the years had made it clear that there was unfinished business Steve wasn't ready to address. So she probably shouldn't be spilling his personal business to Carol now. For all that Carol acted like she knew Steve, they hadn't been friends for years, but the words just seemed to keep falling out of her mouth. "I changed our number once, when we were still in Indianapolis. Told Steve it was because some guy from the bar we worked at kept harassing me, but somehow they tracked it down. Steve didn't give it to them, and I know I didn't; we're always unlisted."

"Buckley, you've been Steve's other half since 1985." Carol started to unlace her skates, making quick work of swapping them out for sneakers. Robin couldn't help but think that the action, and the lack of eye contact, was purposeful. "That's long enough to know that Harrington money can buy just about anything. Unlisted phone numbers are child's play, all things considered."

Since Robin knew that was true; Hell, she could probably track down an unlisted number with enough motivation, and she knew for damn sure Nancy, Erica, or Dustin could do it, so it really wasn't much of a surprise that people with the Harrington's resources would be able to get their hands on one. Again Carol didn't seem to need a response, so she didn't bother to give one. Talking about Steve's parents never failed to make her incandescent with a rage that had nowhere to go, and Steve probably wouldn't like that she was airing his personal business with someone he hadn't spoken to since he was seventeen, so better to stop now before she said anything she’d regret later.

So, she changed the subject. "I should find Steve and you should wrangle Hagan." Robin was proud of the way she sounded so completely normal and not at all like having Carol Perkins all up close and personal, invading her space like they'd known each other all their lives wasn’t fucking weird. They were nearly strangers who had shared a hallway in high school, a hallway where Carol had once shoved Robin into the lockers, by the way! Robin hadn't forgotten about that, no matter how hot Carol looked in her tiny shorts and crop top. "They might be, you know. Working out their latent high school aggression, or something."

Carol laughed, bright and a little mean. "Oh, they're working something out I'd bet," she said, as if she knew a secret that Robin didn't.

It made Robin's skin bristle. She hated that there might be something about Steve she didn't know, a secret that she wasn't privy to that Carol was. She and Steve had lived in each other's brains for seven years, and the idea that he still had secrets from her—ridiculous, she told herself.

"What's that mean?"

"I've left them alone for—" Carol checked the clock above Robin's head. "—almost a half hour at this point. They've probably found a supply closet to work out that, what did you call it? Latent high school aggression?"

Robin gaped at her. Carol arched a perfectly shaped eyebrow.

"Oh my god. Please tell me that yours has had his big bi awakening by now! I can't do it again, Buckley. I've already gone through that with mine, tears and all. Steve was your responsibility when I left him to you after Starcourt."

There were few things that rarely happened to Robin Mark Buckley, and one of those things was being at a loss for words. Right now, faced with a wild-eyed and annoyed Carol Perkins, and the idea that her platonic soulmate could have been hiding romantic or sexual feelings for Tommy Hagan for the better part of a decade, had stolen every single word from her brain. In multiple languages!

"Honey, if Steve needs to have a bisexual crisis, it's going to have to be a quick one, because that is not why we tracked you two down," Carol continues, either not noticing that she'd rendered Robin speechless or choosing to ignore it. "We have much more important things to get done."

"He doesn't…it's not…" She couldn't seem to get out a full sentence when faced with Carol's pure arrogance. Or with being called honey by the hottest woman she'd been in the same room with in her life. It was a lot! "More important things?" Well, she could still repeat words it seemed. "What are you even talking about, Perkins? And what do you mean, you tracked us down?"

Carol didn't answer, just cocked her head to study Robin. The intensity of her gaze made Robin feel like some sort of prey animal. After a long moment, Carol grinned. It did nothing to lessen the feeling of being hunted.

"How do you feel about heists?"

---

Tommy's joke hung in the air between them for a solid six seconds, before Steve felt his lips twitch with amusement.

"Slightly to the left." It was an automatic call and response, a sign of an underdeveloped and juvenile sense of humor. That's what Carol had always said when they were twelve, and he could see from the smirk on Tommy's face that he was having the same memory. "Like always."

Steve turned towards Tommy, once he was sure Robin was fine—he was never able to look away from a match until she was back on her feet —and it was almost like he was viewing his old friend through a fun house infinity mirror, or maybe it was more like there was a stack of photographs in his mind, with dozens of images superimposed on each other.

There was the stocky six year old he'd first met, all freckles and messed up hair, who had sat next to Steve on the swings and declared that they were best friends now. There was seventeen year old Tommy, staring at him from across the cafeteria, eyes confused but face set in stone as Steve put his arm around Nancy. Lines drawn. Eight year old Tommy with missing front teeth, telling Steve he could share his Mom during Muffins with Mom since Steve's forgot to show up. Eighteen year old Tommy, at his door after Billy had beaten Steve's face in during the second go-round with the Upside Down, before Steve shouted at him to just go. Twelve year old Tommy staring at Steve with wide eyes during their first game of spin the bottle, and the scowl on his face when Steve's spin landed on Heather. Twenty year old Tommy, in a dark suit standing shoulder to shoulder with his brothers as dirt was shoveled into an open grave. Twenty year old Tommy in that same dark suit, rumpled now, walking out the door and out of Steve's life again. So many Tommys in between six and twenty, and they all flashed through Steve's mind in an instant, before they snapped into focus as this Tommy:

Twenty-five—a couple months older than Steve, so he'd have had his birthday by now— with wide shoulders that stretched the dark t-shirt he was wearing out nicely. He was still a couple inches shorter than Steve, so no late adolescent growth spurt he'd been hoping for that would have put him taller than his brothers. He was broader than Steve, so still active then, either at the gym with regular workouts or through physical labor, sports. Maybe both. His hair was longer, a darker red than Steve remembered—almost brown—and framed a face still filled with freckles. His eyes were the same honey brown, and the mischief that had been there to start had changed to something different. Regret, maybe? Or maybe Steve was just seeing his own jumbled feelings reflected back at him.

"It's good to see you." Tommy's voice was quiet but Steve didn't have any trouble hearing him over the crowd. "It's been awhile."

"Yeah. Uh. Five years." Steve could do the math down to the day, when he last saw Tommy. He knew Tommy could too. There was no forgetting the funeral of the best woman either of them had ever known, or what had happened after, in a haze of grief, anger, regret. A hundred other emotions Steve couldn't name right then.

Down on the rink, the buzzer sounded, signaling the end of the game. Steve didn't look away from Tommy, didn't head towards the locker rooms to wait for Robin like he normally did. Didn't flirt with the skaters who were interested. There wasn't room for anything except Tommy.

"What are you and Carol doing here?" It could be a coincidence, but Steve didn't think so. Not from the way Tommy had planted himself in Steve's path, not from the way Carol had targeted Robin on the rink. Nothing about this seemed like a coincidence.

Tommy's mouth tightened, his eyes losing some of the warmth and mischief. "What, not happy to see an old friend?" He looked away, back at the now empty rink. "It was Carol's idea."

When there was no follow-up to that, Steve sighed. "It's not that I'm not happy to see you…fuck. It's just…I know you. I know you both. There's a reason you're here, and I'm going to guess it's not to kiss and make-up after five years of nothing."

"We're not the ones who went no contact first, Steve." Tommy's voice was hard, and he turned back so they could glare at each other. "You didn't even talk to me at Ma’s funeral. Do you know how hard that was to explain to my brothers? And that's not even getting into what happened—" He cut himself off, ran a hand through his hair. Frustration was visible on his face, from the way his cheeks got red. Tommy had always hated that; Steve remembered how mad he used to get about it. Steve started to say something, but before he could Tommy continued. "Fuck. I don't want to get into it. Not here. That's not why we came, anyway."

Steve swallowed the apology, the flimsy justifications he'd used to try to soothe his guilt for the last five years, and nodded. "Why are you here then? Don't tell me it's just for Carol to work out some aggression on rollerskates." Though it had looked like Carol was in her element down there, Steve didn't think that was the main reason his two old friends had reappeared in his life.

"Do you remember Operation Hot Racks?"

Steve blinked, the question taking him by surprise.

"That stupid plan we made when we were thirteen to steal all our dads' money?"

He hadn't thought of that in years. They'd been having a sleepover in Tommy's treehouse, and outlined the entire plan in one night. Since they'd been thirteen, it had mostly been stolen from various heist films and some comic books, and had mostly included hot chicks in bikinis being so impressed with their plan that they joined them on a tropical island at the end of it. “What does that have to do with anything?” 

Tommy smirked, and the mischief had returned to his eyes. "Wanna do it for real?"

---

"Heists?" Robin gaped at Carol. "Perkins, what the hell are you talking about?"

Carol laughed. "Okay, I'll give you the short version: when Steve and Tommy were thirteen they came up with a plan to steal all their dads' money. It sucked of course, had way too many babes in bikinis, not enough logistics on how to steal the money. Anyway, Tommy told me about it a few years ago, drunk and weepy over Steve as usual, and I got to thinking." She smirked at Robin. "Then I got to planning. Now, it's time to execute, but we're going to need a little help."

Robin wasn’t sure what to do with the idea of Tommy Hagan drunk and weeping over Steve, so focused on the rest of it. Not that it made any more sense. "You…want to rob Steve's dad?"

"Also Tommy's, but yes. I want to rob them blind. They're doing something super shady, Buckley, and I don't want to get into all the details now but I'm pretty sure it's all tied up in that Starcourt mess from years ago and whatever happened in Hawkins that the government wants us to think was a natural disaster or a gas leak or irradiated water, or whatever the fuck story they put out that's total bullshit."

Carol's eyes were dark, and Robin felt her stomach twist with nerves. What did Starcourt and the Lab have to do with Steve's dad? Carol had to be wrong, and anyway all that was over and done with years ago. Hopper and Joyce had promised it was done, and Nancy said they had the government by the balls about it. Robin trusted Nancy in that, because if there was any chance that the Upside Down was still active—

"Yeah, that struck a nerve, didn't it?" Carol said, breaking into Robin's thoughts. "Knew it would. I don't know how, but you and Steve are in this up to your necks. Not in the same way as Harrington and Hagan Associates are, but you know shit about it." She stood, hands on hips and glared down at Robin. "And that's why you're gonna help us. You and Steve, and anyone else in your merry band we might need, if it turns out we need them." She held out a hand. "Come on, Buckley. Let's get the boys, and find a quiet place to talk. There's a lot to go over and not a lot of time. Our flight back to Chicago is bright and early."

"Steve and I aren't leaving until Sunday." It was only Friday now, and they had been planning to spend a day checking out what Buffalo had to offer—probably not much, but Robin liked to find all the weird tourist traps whenever they went anywhere, and Steve didn't mind tagging along.

"Oh, did I not mention? I called the airline for you, changed your tickets. Almost as easy as finding an unlisted number." Carol winked, then waved her hand impatiently. "Let's go. We have a tight timeline once we get back to Chicago, and I need to get you two up to speed quickly."

Robin's head was whirling, but she took Carol's hand and let herself be pulled up. What did she mean, changing airline tickets was easy; that seemed to Robin like something that should at least be of moderate difficulty. What the hell were Carol and Tommy up to? She was almost positive this was going to be a very bad idea, but if Carol was looking into Starcourt and the earthquake, it was better to know exactly what she knew than to not know what was known—and now she was confusing herself, so she locked that train of thought down, and took her hand back from the other woman.

"I'm not agreeing to anything, Perkins," Robin said, squaring her shoulders and pulling herself to her full height. She was several inches taller than Carol, but somehow that didn't feel like an advantage. "But okay. Let's find Steve and Hagan, and then we can talk."

Carol smirked, as if reading Robin's thoughts, and gave a little two finger salute. "I told Tommy to meet us outside, so if Steve's been cooperative—and I give that fifty-fifty odds, depending how charming Tommy's feeling today—they should be waiting for us." She reached under the bench and pulled out a black and bright pink duffle bag, slung it over her shoulder, then headed for the locker room exit.

Robin, for lack of anything else to do, grabbed her own bag, and followed.

Chapter Text

Steve and Tommy were waiting outside the rink entrance, standing ten feet apart and making a suspicious lack of eye contact. Carol rolled her eyes as she took in the scene; she really didn't have time to deal with whatever homoerotic longing the two of them were going through, but she wasn't going to be their Gay Yoda or whatever the fuck either. They were going to have to figure that shit out on their own; she had a heist to execute, and two rich assholes’ lives to ruin. Not to mention finally getting answers to questions that had haunted her for almost a decade. If there was one thing Carol Perkins hated more than almost anything, it was knowing there were things she didn't know, knowing that the answers were right there at her fingertips, and being denied them.

She was done being denied.

"Hi, Steve. Good to see you're both in one piece still," Carol said, moving to Tommy and slipping her arm through his. He was tense even if he looked outwardly relaxed, and she knew that whatever had gone down between him and Steve hadn't been easy. There would be time to grill him about it later. "Since we're all here, let's get somewhere more private. We have a lot to talk about."

"Carol. Um. Hey." Steve ran a hand through his hair, a gesture that brought back a dozen different memories for Carol. "It's…it's really good to see you." The thing was, she knew he meant it and that he'd missed her as much as she'd missed him, and it made her want to throw her arms around him and spend the next half hour making up for all the Harrington Hugs she'd missed out on over the last seven years.

It also made her want to smack the boyish chagrin right off his face, because it wasn't her fault she'd missed out on those hugs. She hadn't been the one to cut her oldest friends out of her life overnight, with no explanation. She knew she had her own part to play in their friend break-up, but she and Tommy had tried to bridge the gap when it happened, but been rebuffed several times before graduation. Then Starcourt had happened. She'd seen something between Steve and Robin in that hospital room, and had chosen to leave Steve to her, because Tommy had needed her, and they'd both needed to get the fuck out of Hawkins.

Sometimes she wondered what would have happened if she'd kept pushing, if she hadn't walked away. If she had let Tommy stay the way he'd wanted to. Would everything have worked out the same in the end? Would—

"Oh, fuck right off." She wasn't sure if she was talking to herself, or to Steve, and her words came out harsh, bitter. "We’re not doing this right now."

Dammit, she'd thought she had a handle on her anger at him, at herself, had thought she'd worked through it, but nope. It was right there, simmering beneath the surface. She pushed it down and turned to Robin. It was easier somehow to talk to the girl—woman—who had taken her place as Steve’s best friend, even if she still had her moments when she wanted to scratch her nails down Robin's face. It helped that Robin was cute, and Carol was nothing if not an expert at ignoring the bigger issues in favor of a pretty girl. Replacing fantasies of clawing Robin's face with scratching her nails down her back during much more fun activities was progress. Her therapist—if she had one—would be proud.

"You're at the Marriott, which is closer, so we'll go there," Carol said, and saw the surprise on their faces. She rolled her eyes. "Maverick over there would have wanted to stay at the Lafayette, because it has the same name as that hotel from Top Gun, but when you got here you realized it's basically a crack den, so you fell back on old habits." She hooked a thumb at Tommy. "Goose here did the same fucking thing, so we're at the Wyndham."

"That's—really close to what happened," Buckley said, looking between Tommy and Steve, who were avoiding eye contact with each other. "But we're at the Day's Inn. Marriotts are kind of out of our price range."

"Fine. We'll still go there." It was further away than she'd expected, but still closer than where she and Tommy were staying so the plan stayed the same. "I'll drive."

***

The rental car was nothing to write home about—a non-descript sedan—but it had seemed much roomier when it had been just him and Carol. Maybe it was the difference between the front seat and the back, Tommy thought, or maybe it was more to do with the fact that he was sharing the backseat with his estranged…best friend and as roomy as the sedan was, anything would feel cramped when you were achingly aware of every single inch of space between you. Probably that second one, he decided, as he concentrated on keeping his leg from bouncing up and down the way it did when he was nervous.

How Buckley had bested him to shotgun, he didn't fucking know, but one minute Carol had been sliding behind the wheel and the next Buckley had been slamming the passenger door, exclaiming, "Sorry Hagan, I get carsick," without sounding sorry at all.

Which left Steve and Tommy standing awkwardly next to each other, staring at the roomy backseat which didn't seem roomy at all when faced with two fully grown men.

Carol had honked the horn after a few seconds of them standing there.

"We'd better get in, man. She'll leave us here," Tommy had muttered. "Don't really want to have to walk all the way to your hotel."

"Yeah. Uh. Right." Steve had gotten in behind Robin, Tommy behind Carol, and here they were. Riding in uncomfortable silence.

That lasted only until the first light, when Buckley said, "So. Top Gun. Steve loves that movie. We, uh, missed it in the theater, but we rented it as soon as it came out." She leaned forward and started fiddling with dials on the radio, muttering under her breath as she scrolled through the stations.

"Yeah, came out at a weird time for all of us. We missed it in the theater too," Carol said, her voice laced with barbed wire. Tommy looked up and saw she was glancing back at them in the rearview mirror, her eyes locked on Steve's. "Wonder why we didn't have time for movies. Have any idea, Steve?"

In his peripheral vision, Tommy saw Steve visibly flinch and look like he wanted to say something, then turn to look out the window.

"Carol," he said, voice low. "Not now."

Up front, Buckley shifted awkwardly in her seat, twisting around to look at Steve, then Tommy, then Carol. "Uh. Right. Top Gun. Good movie, even though we watched it so many times when it first came out on video I thought I was going to lose my mind." Robin launched into a commentary on how the movie could be seen as propaganda for the US Air Force, but Tommy tuned her out.

"I'm sorry."

Steve's voice was so low, Tommy almost missed it.

"Steve. I said not now."

"No. I have to say it. I'm sorry I wasn't there for you after your mom's death. I should have been, no matter what…no matter what happened with us. I should have been there."

Robin's harsh inhale from the front seat was drowned out by Carol's harsh laugh. "You're goddamn right you should have been there, and not only then. You didn't just cut us out of your life. You cut her out too." Carol had always been angriest about that.

"I'm sorry, I can't—there are reasons—I couldn't…I didn't…not completely." Steve's aborted attempts at explanation did nothing to soothe the ache in Tommy's heart, but he'd known that Steve and his mom had stayed in touch though not as much as his mom had wanted. The only ones Steve had cut out of his life completely had been him and Carol. "She wrote me a reference for Family Video. Met Robin. I just…I had to pull back. I couldn't…I always thought there'd be more time."

Tommy saw that Robin had fully abandoned her seat belt and was sitting so she could put her hand between the seats. Steve was clinging to her like a lifeline. Despite the united front, he thought she looked a little shocked by the conversation, and wondered if Steve had ever explained the full history to her. He thought probably not, from the way she glanced warily between them all, before focusing on Tommy. It was fucking unnerving being the center of attention.

"Well, there wasn't, and now she's dead along with a good quarter of the rest of Hawkins, which is nothing but a crater." Carol's voice was acidic. "I think it's time you tell us what the fuck you and Buckley and the rest of your psychotic nerds have to do with it." Through the rearview mirror, Carol arched a brow at Tommy, as if saying, as she had a hundred times before, Vagina up babe, give them the hook.

"And we'll tell you what we know about how our dads are connected."

***

The ride to the hotel didn't take long, but Carol's head was swimming with new information by the time she pulled into an empty spot in the back of the Day's Inn. Buckley had done most of the talking—alternate dimensions, shady government science experiments, little kids with psychic powers, monsters with no faces. Russians, somehow. Steve had jumped in here and there, mostly to stop Buckley from rambling off on tangents, and by the time they were done she had enough to fill in the giant amounts of blank spots in her own research. It was a game of Tetris, she thought, shifting her mental files around to fit in the new ones, or maybe more like finally having all the pieces of the multiple jigsaw puzzles that had been mixed up and thrown together in front of her.

"Why didn't you tell us, Steve?"

Tommy's voice broke the silence that had settled when Carol put the car in park, none of them moving to get out just yet. Carol was glad, because she didn't think she could make her vocal cords work if she needed them to. Of all the scenarios she had speculated about, other fucking worlds and monsters hadn't factored in. Russians she'd almost expected—it had been the 1980s, everyone expected Russians—and she'd considered aliens even if she'd never told Tommy (he would have gotten too excited about it), but somehow parallel universes and actual goddamned mind control was harder to accept.

"We weren't friends anymore, Tommy." Carol was glad she was faced away from Steve for that little knife to the heart. "And there were the NDAs. I couldn't say anything."

"Bullshit." Carol was surprised at how weak her own voice sounded, but was pleased to see the way Steve winced. That probably made her a bad person or something, but she had years of pent up anger to work out, and this was a start. "That's absolute fucking bullshit, Steve, and you know it. We had a stupid fight over fucking Nancy Wheeler, and you froze us out without a second thought. But don't say we weren't fucking friends anymore, like it was a choice we all made equally."

"Didn't seem like you cared much, hanging around with Billy fucking Hargrove—"

"Okay, this isn't getting us anywhere," Robin broke in. "We told you ours, and broke about a dozen NDAs to do it, so I think it's your turn. What did you mean about your dads? Whose dads? Yours and Tommy's? How could they have anything to do with the earthquake—we just told you that was Henry Creel, and the Upside Down."

The questions came rapid pace, but Carol answered them one by one, and held up a finger for each as she did. "We'll tell you, but we should go to your room. I've got a lot of papers, and the car isn't the best place to lay them out." She held up the next finger. "Richard Harrington and Robert Hagan have a long history of shady business deals together, and a number of them don't add up. One, in particular, doesn't add up a whole lot, and I think you'll be familiar with it: Starcourt Mall." She waited a moment for that tidbit to settle between them all before holding up the third and final finger. "I don't know how it connects, but I'm going to damn well find out." She took a breath, then removed the keys from the ignition with steady, precise movements, and pushed open the driver's door.

"Now, if you don't mind." She slid out of the car, then leaned back in to look at the other three who were still just sitting there, not making eye contact with one another. "Let's take this little party somewhere more comfortable."

She didn't wait to see if they would follow her. She knew what floor Steve and Robin were staying on. She knew what room they were in as well, and she'd been disappointed how easy it'd been to get it out of the front desk clerk when she'd called that morning. She'd been looking forward to a little pregame intimidation, but the Bored George she'd spoken with had been happy to let her know that Mr. Harrington was staying in room 669, but was not in, could he take a message? Carol hadn't left one, and hung up with a strange pang in her chest.

She and Tommy were in room 669 as well, though they were at different hotels. Tommy's idea of a funny joke. Steve's too, she'd been sure then, and was sure of it now as she angrily pressed the elevator Up button she blinked away angry tears. Did Steve even realize what a hole he'd left in her and Tommy's lives, that she was tearing up over a stupid fucking room number, chosen by two men with the same sophomoric sense of humor in their mid-twenties that they'd had at twelve? That she'd seen the listing for the Lafayette Hotel and somehow known Steve would make the same mistake Tommy had, thinking it was the hotel from that stupid movie? That she'd had similar flashes hundreds of times since high school, and not known what to do about any of it.

Sometimes she wished she could go back seven years and smack sense into all three of them. If psychic powers were real, why not time travel?

"We're on the sixth floor."

Buckley's voice took her by surprise. Carol hadn't noticed the other three walking up as the elevator doors slid open.

"I know," Carol said, stepping into the elevator and pressing the button for the sixth floor. She pressed the button to close the elevators as well; the others could get in or not, she was done waiting. "Room 669."

"How do you—no, of course you know, finding a hotel room can't be harder than changing frigging airline tickets," Buckley muttered, pushing Steve and Tommy into the elevator before she slid in just as the doors started to close. "You've got a real issue with respecting personal boundaries, Perkins."

"It's the personal boundaries you have an issue with, not the several laws I bent to get the information I wanted?" Carol asked, amused despite the anger and hurt and confusion still bouncing around inside her. "Maybe there's hope for you yet, Buckley."

"Maybe this isn't a conversation for the elevator," Tommy said, with a pointed glance upwards. There was a red blinking light in the corner, indicating that this elevator might be being monitored. Not exactly common, but not uncommon, so while it pained her, Tommy was right. Better safe than sorry. "We're almost there; whatever else there is to say can wait."

***

Tommy made them all wait a little longer once they were inside Steve—and Robin's—room. He wanted to make sure they weren't overheard, and Carol had built a little toy for exactly this purpose. It took ten minutes, but by the time he was done sweeping the room, he was satisfied that one of his or Steve's dad's minions hadn't followed them here just to bug the hotel room. There was a part of him that was almost disappointed; if he'd found something it would mean that their dads thought of them as a big enough threat to send someone, and it would give Tommy someone to take his frustration out on. As it was, there was nothing to do with the restless anticipation that had taken up residency just under his skin ever since he'd spotted Steve in the roller rink an hour ago but ignore it.

"Did you expect to find something with…whatever that is?" Steve asked, when Tommy stopped packing the small, square room with its double beds and stale smell of cigarette smoke that lingered even though this particular room was marked as a 'non-smoking' double.

"It's called a non-linear junction detector," Carol informed Steve, taking the device from Tommy and tucking it back in her bag. She sounded smug, which was an improvement over how she'd sounded in the car as far as Tommy was concerned. "Basically it can detect all sorts of electronic equipment, including surveillance, even if it's turned off. If we'd found anything, I'd use this girl to jam the frequencies." Carol pulled out another device, let Robin and Steve have a look. "I call it the Thompson Special."

It took a minute, but Tommy saw the moment Steve got the joke from the way he tried and failed to suppress a grin. "Because it would have been useful at Tina's sixteenth birthday party, when Tammy brought out the microphone," Steve guessed, correctly. For some reason this made Robin snort a laugh, and the two of them shared a glance that Tommy couldn't decipher. They had a lot of those, secret looks that meant secret things that Tommy wasn't a part of. Steve had an entire life he didn't know anything about.

"Nothing unexpected, though, so no need to put the Thompson Special to work today." Which meant there wasn't really any reason to stop dicking around, even though he'd barely processed everything Steve and Robin had told them in the car. He wanted to write it all down, get a timeline going, match it up with what he and Carol had discovered, but they needed to get Robin and Steve up to speed first. He knew that they were running short on time, and fitting in decades of secret science experiments, alternate pocket dimensions, and psychic powers was going to take time. "Carol—"

She was already spreading the files out, arranging them in a rough timeline from the late sixties to the present, though there were a lot of gaps, especially after '85. The most interesting bits, and where their research overlapped with Steve and Robin's knowledge, had to do with the Hawkins Lab and Starcourt. Harrington and Hagan Associates, through a trail of shell companies, was ultimately responsible for both of the land purchases to subsidiaries ultimately traced to the US Department of Energy and the Soviet Union, respectfully. There were other purchases and sales as well, across the country and internationally, that made the hair on the back of Tommy's neck stand up, but it was the Hawkins specific ones they needed to focus on. Those were where he needed answers for, someone to hold responsible, someone to blame.

By the time the information was all laid out, in black and white, with Carol scribbling in what Steve and Robin had told them: names, dates, causalities, connections, all there side by side with years of research and bits of information he and Carol had put together piecemeal from dinners with his dad, summer internships in the mail room, and Carol learning how to hack into the dark underbelly of the new and wild world wide web. It was…a lot, and he knew from the stunned expressions on Steve and Robin's faces that they were as overwhelmed as he was with it all.

"Well. Fuck."

Robin was the first the break the long silence they'd fallen into after Carol finished with their latest piece of information: Their dads had some sort of meeting planned with a man they referred to only as Mr. X (which Tommy privately thought was a stupid codename, but no one had ever accused his dad or Mr. Harrington of being clever) during the annual Harrington and Hagan Associates Gala that was held every June at the corporate headquarters in Chicago. Which gave them about three weeks to find a way in, figure out who Mr. X was, what he had to do with any of it, and if he was the mastermind behind it all or just another stooge.

"I can't…he knew. This whole time. He knew. He had to have—" Steve broke off with a snarl. "I need a smoke—Robin don't." He crossed the room in a few angry strides, yanked the door open, and let it slam behind him.

"I should…"

Robin was halfway across the room, despite Steve's plea for her not to follow, before Tommy stopped her.

"No. Let me." She looked unsure, like she wanted to argue, but he gently nudged her aside, back towards Carol. "My dad's in it too. If anyone can understand what he's feeling right now, it's me." She might have gotten all of Steve in the past five years, but he'd been Tommy's first, and this—their shared history with shitty fathers—was something he wasn't going to give her easily. "I promise I'll bring him back to you in one piece, Buckley."

She ran her hands through her hair, then pinned him with a stare that made him feel seen to his very core. "You better," she said, and he heard the you let him go before, he's mine now beneath the words.

Tommy didn't respond, just followed after Steve the way he'd always done.

***

The door didn't slam behind Tommy, just settled quietly into place, but Buckley still stood there for an extra second. Carol wondered if she was waiting for Steve to come back, or Tommy to report back immediately, but she seemed frozen. Buckley standing still was odd, unnatural. She was someone who should always be in motion, Carol thought, never still, never quiet. Even in high school she'd always been tapping a pen, mumbling under her breath, bouncing one leg or another. It had driven Carol crazy in the few classes they'd shared together.

"He's going to be okay, Buckley. It's hardly the first time Tommy's had to talk him down after his dad's done something shitty. Or vice versa. They were pros by middle school," Carol said, moving to sit cross-legged on the free bed. It gave her a view of the parking lot, and of the mess of files on the other bed.

Robin snapped out of her fugue state to turn and glare at Carol. "That's not exactly comforting, you know," she said, crossing her arms over her chest. "And you've been gone from Steve's life a long time. He's not the same King Steve you remember, with the hardened exterior and affected nonchalance, care about nothing facade. He actually gives a shit, about me, about his friends, about his parents unlike—"

"Okay, I'm going to stop you right the fuck there, Buckley, and tell you to stop talking about things you don't know anything about. You don't know me, you don't know Tommy, and if you think anything about King Steve was real, maybe I was wrong all those years ago when I made the decision to walk away in that hospital room." Please, she thought, don't let me have been wrong. She didn't think she was, could see her love for Tommy mirrored in Robin's love for Steve, but even Carol Perkins could be wrong once in her life. "Steve is the one who froze us out. He chose Nancy Wheeler, and secrets, over ten years of friendship, and kept choosing secrets for years after Nancy Wheeler broke his heart."

She took a breath, and let it out. She could see that Robin was about to say something, but cut her off. "Now, we're not in high school anymore and I can admit that Tommy and I were not the nicest of people. We made mistakes, the biggest of them being Billy Hargrove, but we tried—more than once—to apologize and make amends. Steve's the one who shut us down, and he had his reasons. We all did. That's between us to figure out." She was proud of how mature she sounded, when really she wanted to scream and shout about how unfair it was to have lost so many years to stubbornness and pride.

"I'm sorry," Robin said, after a moment of studying Carol more closely than Carol liked. Robin moved to the window, spent a long minute looking down, then turned around to lean against the glass. "Steve doesn't talk about you two. At all. Guess that should have been my first clue that there's unresolved issues. I could have pushed but—"

"You didn't want to share him." Carol saw the surprise in Robin's eyes, and knew she'd hit the mark. "Steve was my friend first, did you know that? We grew up next to each other. Birth to first grade, it was just the two of us. Then…there was Tommy. He sat down on the swing next to Steve—cut in front of me, actually—and announced to the entire class that Steve was his best friend, and if people didn't like it, he would push them in the mud."

Robin laughed. "Really?"

"Scout's honor," Carol said, holding up the universal scout sign with her fingers. "I was pissed of course, Steve was mine, I didn't want some freckled faced loser kid horning in on my territory." She grinned at the memory. "But Tommy's kind of like a fungus. He grows on you, and eventually you can't live without him."

"I think that makes him a parasite actually, or maybe one of those suckerfish that feed off whales."

"Well, he does like to suck certain things," Carol said, deadpan, just to see if she could make Robin laugh again. She was beautiful when she laughed. "Anyway, what I'm saying is, I get it. I don't like to share either."

Robin did laugh, and she was beautiful, but she sobered quickly. "It's not just that. It's…you guys were his friends before me. You have all this…history that I don't get. I can see that even just from an hour with you. Even with the rest of the party, it's always been me and Steve. I don't…never mind." She looked frustrated with herself, and Carol fought the urge to reach out and tuck her hair behind her ear. Get it together Perkins!

"I wanted to scratch your eyes out," she found herself admitting. Robin looked up in surprise again. "That night in the hospital, after Starcourt. I walked in, and there you were. Slotted into my spot at Steve's side like you'd been there forever, and you'd known him what? Three or four days at that point? It made me so mad, I wanted to scratch your eyes out, pull your hair, have a good old fashioned girl fight over a boy I don't even want to fuck."

Robin stared at her for a long moment, then threw her head back and laughed. It was a low, throaty sort of laugh that Carol wanted to hear a lot more of. "I don't want to fuck him either, but he's like…the other half of my soul, you know?"

"Yeah. I know. That's why I could leave. Because I knew he'd be okay as long as he had you, and I needed to get Tommy out of Hawkins. I had to get us both out before it killed us."

She and Robin both knew she wasn't talking about literal monsters.

"Okay. So. Where do we go from here?"

Carol shrugged. "I don't know about the rest, but right now you come over here, we go over this shit again, firm up the timeline, and make a plan for the first steps once we get to Chicago." She patted the bed next to her. "How do you feel about evening wear?"

***

Tommy took the stairs two at a time rather than wait for the elevator, and found Steve sitting on the trunk of the rental car. It was dark now, but Steve was illuminated by the dim florescent of the parking lot lights. He had a cigarette in hand, unlit like he didn't know what to do with it.

"Need a light?" Tommy asked, digging his Bic out of his pocket to toss to Steve. "So. That was…a lot."

Steve caught the lighter, but didn't light the cigarette. "Did you know after Starcourt my dad didn't even come see me in the hospital? I almost died, several times that weekend. Fuck, I was tortured by men he took money from, and he couldn't even fucking come to see me." He let out a shuddering breath, and leaned back in a half-reclining position against the window. From the corner of his eye, Tommy saw him blink rapidly several times.

"Dad didn't pay for the funeral, the headstone, any of it. Said they were divorced, it wasn't his responsibility. Theo and Todd took out loans for everything. They're still paying it off."

Steve scrubbed at his face, then sat up and twisted so he was facing Tommy. "God, they're such fucking pieces of shit, aren't they? Not just the shady business deals that borders potential treason, but right on down the line to a soul deep level of shittiness." He let out a laugh that bordered on a sob. "Tommy, I'm so sorry I wasn't there for your mom. For you, for your brothers. I know I said it early, but I should have been there, Tommy, no matter what happened between us. Our dads aren't the only pieces of shit I guess." He finally flicked the wheel on the Bic, lit the cigarette, but didn't take a drag.

"Oh fuck you. You don't get to play the pity card right now," Tommy said, but without a lot of heat. He didn't have the energy for anger at the moment. "Yeah, you should have been there. I shouldn't have walked out. And we both did some shitty stuff when we were teenagers, and grief didn't make it any easier to get past that." He took the cigarette from Steve's hand, brought it up and took a long inhale letting the smoke settle in his lungs before letting it out. "But we're not our dads. We're not even close to the same level of shittiness that they are. They're like, the Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen of shittiness. We're…Shaquille O'Neal and Alonzo Mourning."

Steve let out a snort. "O'Neal's going to be better than Jordan one day, you know that right?"

"Oh, fuck you. Jordan's going to win gold for the US this year. O'Neal didn't even make the team."

"Yeah, and that was a stupid fucking decision. No way Laettner's got the same potential. Ten years from now, you're going to look back on this conversation and say Gosh, Steve, you were so smart and clever and all-knowing."

Tommy grinned and ducked his head. "Ten years from now, huh? That mean you're still going to be talking to me then?" The question came out less teasing than he'd wanted it to, and he felt his stomach twist into knots as he waited for Steve's answer.

"I never should have stopped. Talking to you, to Carol." Steve's admission is quiet, and settles into the air around them with the fireflies that are just starting to come out. "I didn't know how to talk to you without telling you everything, and…I was hurt. Angry. I wanted you both to stay safe, away from the Upside Down. All of that, I guess. I don't know. I just…kept telling myself that one day I'd be able to look at you without it all coming crashing down and then your mom—"

"Then mom died in the earthquake that wasn't an earthquake," Tommy finished for him, taking another long drag of the cigarette. He offered it to Steve, who shook his head, mumbling something about how Robin hated the smell. "And we had that last fight, after the funeral."

Steve nodded. "You wanted answers. I couldn't give them. You were right to leave." He leaned his shoulder against Tommy's. "I'm sorry, Tom. That I couldn't save her. I didn't even know she was in Hawkins or—"

Tommy swallowed against the lump in his throat. "You couldn't have. She was supposed to be in Indy, shopping for a mother-of-the-bride dress that weekend."

"I know. She told me, the last time I saw her at Family Video. She was so excited for Theo and Deb. She…she said she hoped I'd accept the invitation. That it would be the olive branch we needed to put all that 'high school silliness' behind us."

Tommy's laugh was a little wetter than he'd like. "Yeah, that sounds like her." She'd always been on his ass about making up with Steve. "Were you going to? Accept the invite?" He'd wanted to know the answer for years, but Deb had lost the original RSVP list in the earthquake and hadn't remembered one name out of over a hundred. It hadn't exactly been top of the priority list anyway.

Steve was quiet for a long moment, then in a voice almost too quiet for the silence of the parking lot says, "Yeah. I was going to accept the invite."

"Fuck, I've missed you."

Tommy had turned towards Steve to make that confession, but he was still caught off guard when Steve's lips pressed against his. The kiss was soft at first, but at the first needy sound that escaped—Tommy couldn't have said who it was who made it—the kiss turned hot, fast. He slid his tongue against Steve's, bit down on his lower lip to hear him groan, wrapped his free hand around the back of Steve's neck and pulled him closer the way he'd wanted to do for years, maybe for his entire life. He flicked the cigarette off to the side so he could bury his other hand into that glorious hair, and moaned when he felt Steve's hands wrap around his biceps, gripping him tight, nails biting into the thin fabric of his t-shirt.

"Fuck," Steve panted against his mouth, pulling back so their foreheads rested together when they both needed a moment to breathe. "This is not how I expected this to go."

"Really? Feels like this is where this has always been going."

"This is crazy. Tell me you know this is crazy?"

"Why? Because we're both dudes?"

"What? No, I've known I was bi for ages man, I just…it's you. Me. Us. We haven't spoken in five years. There's our dads. The heist. Figuring out what it has to do with the Lab, the Upside Down. And what? We're just…gonna make out about it?"

Tommy shrugged. "Seems better than me kicking your ass again, but we can revisit that if you really want to." He leaned in for another kiss, teasing Steve's lip with his teeth again.

"You're such a dick," Steve said, but he kissed back and was laughing as he said it. "And don't be so sure about kicking my ass this time. I've gotten a lot better a fighting since the last time."

"So have I."

They spent another few minutes exploring each other's mouths, and Tommy was very proud of his restraint when Steve practically climbed into his lap right there on the trunk of the car. The only thing stopping him from seeing how far Steve would let him get was that they were in full view of the hotel, and though the parking lot was mostly empty that didn't mean it was as private as he wanted it to be. Carol would kill him if he got into a fight before their flight back to Chicago.

"Okay, we…we have to stop," Steve said, breathless from the kisses, and shoved Tommy away from his neck before the mark he was sucking there could form. "This…it's fast, man. It's really fast, so much happened today I can't even think straight." He paused, unable to meet Tommy's eyes. "I know there's a joke there, but can you save it for another time? I can't…do that right now, man."

Tommy let out a half laugh, but nodded and let Steve moved so there was space between them. On one level he knew Steve was right, it was too fast, too soon, with too much they still needed to talk about, but there was a part of him, the dark, possessive side that had finally gotten what it had always wanted, that wanted to pull Steve right back in and never let go.

"Okay. We're lucky Carol hasn't come to drag us back in yet," Tommy said, forcing that dark part of himself away. "Let's go back up. We've got an early flight to catch."

Chapter Text

There hadn't been a lot of talking after Steve and Tommy returned to the room. Carol had packed the papers away, the four of them had agreed to meet at the airport the next morning, and then Carol and Tommy had left Steve and Robin to their thoughts.

Robin had a lot of thoughts, but her chief one was to make sure Steve was okay. Well, not okay, because she knew he wasn't okay. She wasn't okay, so there was no way he could be okay with everything that had been thrown at them, but at least not about to crash and burn on her. She turned on her side in her bed, and could make him out in his own, a lump under the covers.

"So. Where'd you get the contraband?"

It was the first thing they'd said beyond general did you pack the toothpaste? or have you seen my red sweater? since Tommy and Carol had left, and it wasn't what she'd meant to say at all, but it was what came out and she heard a snort from Steve's side of the room.

"Contraband?"

"The cigarettes Steven Marie! You were going to throw the rest of them out! What happened to quitting?" Steve didn't smoke often, usually just in social or stressful situations, and had been making good progress in quitting for good. "Do you have a secret stash of them? Did you hide them in your rolled up underwear when you packed, because you knew I wouldn't look there? How often are you smoking? Did you even read the article I left out? "

"Jesus Christ—Robin, I didn't even smoke it. I lit up, then sat there. Tommy ended up smoking it." Steve sighed, the way he always did when he was both annoyed and amused with her. "And yes, I read the article. I just…keep a carton around. You know. For times like this."

"You mean times when you've reconnected with your ex-best friends only to find out that your dad might be a traitor, and is definitely involved in the on-going trauma that's shaped your life since you were sixteen years old, all the while never mentioning anything to you, barely acknowledging said trauma, and making you feel like you've failed at, like, life, when he's the one—" Robin trailed off as Steve let out a half laugh that turned into a cut off sob, and suddenly it was the stupidest thing in the world that they were in different beds. "Move over, I'm coming in."

She didn't give him time to protest, just grabbed her pillow and shuffled the three feet between the beds and shoved at him until he shifted so there was room for her to crawl beneath the covers with him. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to blurt it all out like that, I just can't stop thinking about it. About what it means—I can't turn my brain off." She pushed at him until he rolled on his side, and then curled up behind him. He hated to admit how much he liked being the little spoon, so sometimes she had to bully him into it.

"Do you think he knew? That all those times I was hurt, it was because of the Upside Down? That everything that went down—the lab, Starcourt, the aftermath of the earthquake—happened because of shit he did?"

Robin took a moment before answering, but went with the truth. "Yes. I think it's almost impossible that he didn't know, at least by the time Starcourt came around. Your dad's an asshole, but he's not stupid. The information Carol had—it's pretty damning." The names and dates were seared into her memory now, and it all added up to one thing: Richard Harrington was wrapped up in the Upside Down stuff from lots of angles, and even if he didn't know about the supernatural of it all, he knew enough that it was more likely than not that he knew how and why Steve had been injured so many times.

"I kissed Tommy."

The absolute change of subject took her by such surprise that she sat straight up, flailing her limbs enough that she winced as she cracked her elbow against the headboard.

"You what?"

"I kissed Tommy. Outside. Tonight. And once when we were thirteen, and after his mom's funeral we almost fucked but—-well, it's probably good we didn't. That…wasn't a good time. For either of us."

Robin's brain, already overwhelmed with the amount of information it had processed tonight, shorted out as she gaped at him. Then, all the pieces slotted into place, and she could see how it fit.

"Why didn't you tell me?" She didn't want to sound hurt, but she couldn't help it. She and Steve shared everything—clothes, a bed, their lives. He'd come out to her as bisexual years ago, in another bathroom in a club in Indianapolis, and confessed other crushes—Jonathan, Eddie, guys on various sports teams over the years—but he'd always talked around the issue of Tommy. She wondered now if she should have pushed him. "You could have told me."

"I know. I'm sorry, I almost did. So many times. I guess…I always felt if I did, it would make it too real."

"Steve." She settled back down in the bed, curled around him again. He was stiff in her arms, but as she snuggled close he relaxed against her. "You're a silly, silly man. Of course it's too real. You've been in love with him almost your whole life, haven't you?"

His shoulders shook, but she could tell it was with laughter and not tears. "Yeah, I'm pretty sure I have been. And I don't know what to do about it."

She rested her head between his shoulder blades. "Well. How about to start, we focus on Operation Hot Racks. Which, by the way, is a stupid name for a heist."

"It is not!"

"What about Operation: Dad's Dirty Deeds?"

"Great porno, bad heist."

"The Chicago Job, then."

"Boring! Robin, you're terrible at this!"

"Okay, dingus, you do better."

"I already did, when I was twelve."

They drifted to sleep still arguing over better names for the heist.

***

They rode to their hotel in silence, the radio tuned low to some sports talk. Carol twisted the dial off after five minutes; she couldn't listen to a couple of guys yelling over each other about the Bills and if they'd make the Superbowl again this year. It was June; football didn't start for months so Carol didn't know why they were already screaming about it now.

"I was listening to that."

"No you weren't. You hate the Bills."

"Yeah, because they suck," Tommy said, with the same sort of scoffing tone one of the sports radio guys had used. "Made it to the Super Bowl three times now, and fucked up all three chances."

Carol literally didn't care, but it was nice to hear him talk shit about sports like things were normal. She needed normal right now, so Brain had time to organize itself into a world where monsters and alternate dimensions were real.

They fell back into silence for another couple of blocks. Then, because Carol had never been good at leaving things alone, she poked at the pink elephant in the car.

"So…did you fuck him or punch him?"

"Jesus Christ, Carol." Tommy sounded defensive, but also like he'd expected the question. "No, I didn't fuck him." He paused for a moment, then added, "I didn't punch him either. We just talked."

"You were out there for a long time, talking, and you were weird when you came back in." Carol used a red light to turn to look at him, and managed to catch his eye. "And you've got a little—" She reached out and ran her hand along his jaw, where it was just slightly reddened. "Steve looks good with a little stubble, don't you think?"

"Oh fuck you." Tommy pulled back from her, and gestured at her to go now that the light had turned green. "We kissed, is that what you want to hear? Want me to go into details about what a good kisser he is? I didn't know you were into Steve that way."

"Don't get defensive with me, babe." Not when she knew just how fucked up Tommy had been over Steve for so many years. "I kinda thought something like this would happen. Didn't I tell you not to get distracted by his pretty hazel eyes?" For some reason her mind strayed to Robin, and her pretty laugh, then to Robin, and being replaced, before she pushed the thoughts away. She was having too many thoughts, and she hated it. "Remember what we're here for."

"I haven't forgotten. Hard to, when we've spent the last year of our lives planning this."

She didn't point out that it had been longer than a year, that she'd been thinking about this since the week after his mom's funeral, because it wasn't important. What was important was to bring the focus back to the issue at hand—figuring out how the new information fit into the overall blueprint she had in mind, if they needed to adjust the timeline at all, and if alternate dimensions and magic powers meant they needed to alter their approach at all. Right now, she was leaning towards no. Infiltrating H&H Associates during the gala was still the right move, reading Steve—and Robin—in had been necessary, and the four of them all had roles to play to get it done. It was on Carol to make sure that happened, and to do that—

"We can't afford to be distracted." She didn't know who she was talking to more—Tommy, or herself. "Eyes on the prize. No distractions, no deviations. We stick to the plan, see this through to the end."

Tommy was silent until she'd pulled the car into their hotel's lot. "I'm not distracted," he said, as she put the car in the park. "But…I don't want to angry with him anymore. There's…so much…everything they told us about that other world, the monsters, everything with our dads. I don't…I can't be mad at him, and do what I need to do so this whole Operation Hot Racks—are you sure we shouldn't change the name?—doesn't fall apart at the seams." She hated when Tommy was the rational one; it didn't suit him any more than it suited her. Neither of them were made to be rational people. "So I'm letting it go." He made some sort of gesture that she assumed was supposed to illustrate the whole letting it go bullshit.

"You've never let anything go in your whole fucking life." She felt like it was on her to point this out, since he was insisting on being reasonable for once in his life. "You're still holding a grudge against Theo for that time he made you eat a bug when you were five."

He gave her an affronted look. "First, Theo sat on me and shoved it down my throat, and one day when he's old and gray and not expecting it, I'm gonna find the biggest spider in the old fart's home, and shove it up his nose," Tommy said, as he'd said a hundred times before. "Second, yes. This, I'm letting go. At least until we've pulled off the heist of the century."

Carol was silent for a minute, working through her own shit as best she could. She'd spent so many years being angry at Steve for so many things, and she didn't think she was wrong to be mad about most of it, but she could almost see Tommy's point. They were going to need all of their focus to unravel the secrets Robert Hagan and Richard Harrington were hiding, and she had a feeling they'd only just scratched the surface. The information about the Upside Down, the monsters, psychic kids—that all played into this in ways she couldn't fully understand, and maybe there was no room for anger to complicate things.

"Fine. But I reserve the right to kick his ass if he hurts you again."

Tommy grinned, then leaned in and kissed her lightly. "He hurt you too, and we hurt him. We all hurt each other, and I guess it's time we try to do better now that we're not fucked up teenagers." He rested his forehead against hers for a moment, then drew back to his side of the car.

"No, we're fucked up adults and I'm not sure that's any better than being fucked up teenagers," Carol said, as she finally turned the car off. "Speaking of fucked up: alternate dimensions? Monsters? Kids with telekinesis? Are we going to debrief on that, or just keep talking about the Steve Harrington of it all? Because: what the fuck?"

"Come on, let's go in, make sure our room is still bug free, then we'll debrief." He opened the door, got out, then leaned in to add, "Would you be mad if I'm sad it's not aliens?"

***

"Come on, we're going to miss the plane." They were running through the airport, having rushed through security like the family in Home Alone. Robin was sure if they had the kids with them they'd have lost one of them—Mike, probably—but since it was just her and Steve, and their haphazardly packed suitcases, she was pretty sure they were fine. "What was the gate number again?"

"I told you not to shut the curtains all the way." Steve juggled the bags so he could peer at the tickets Carol had left them the night before, and she steered him around a young family that had stopped to tie a shoe in the middle of the hallway. "It's gate 25. All the way at the end."

"It's not in a different terminal is it?" The backpack on her shoulder started to slip. "Fuck. Shit. Who chooses a 6 am flight anyway? Your old friends are assholes."

"Robin! There's just one terminal, it's a small airport. We're almost there." He snorted at the last comment. "I know, but we're assholes too. You can sleep on the plane."

"You know I can't sleep on a plane Steve!"

"We'll get you espresso when we get to Chicago, you big baby."

There wasn't time to elbow him in the stomach, as they came—finally—to gate 25. Tommy and Carol were there already—of course they were—standing by the gate as the line of passengers finished boarding. They'd heard final boarding call as they'd run through the airport, so they really were cutting it close.

"That's one way to make an entrance," Carol commented as they skidded to a halt. Robin pretended not to notice that she wasn't wearing a bra under her flowered dress, or the way the leather jacket hugged her curves. "I thought I was going to have to fake pregnancy nausea again. You'd be amazed at how long they'll hold a plane for a sick pregnant woman."

"She's suffered first semester morning sickness nine times now." Tommy had his and Carol's carry ons in one hand and stood with his arm around her shoulder. They looked like the perfect upwardly mobile couple, and Robin might even have bought it if she'd encountered them for the first time today. "Wait. That wasn't right, was it?"

"No babe. It really wasn't," Carol said, laughing. "Come on. Let's go. They're going to close the doors on us."

Carol led the way, presented her and Tommy's tickets to the annoyed flight attendants. Robin started after them and Steve fell in beside her. He leaned close, and whispered, "It's trimester, right? Not semester?" just low enough that Robin was almost sure Carol and Tommy couldn't hear.

"Yeah, dingus. It's trimester. I really hope neither of you ever get someone pregnant, Christ."

"Not something I'm worried about at the moment."

"I wonder why," she teased. It was nice to get back something resembling normal. "You ready for this?"

He glanced at her from out of the corner of his eye, and raised an eyebrow. "Since I don't think you mean getting anyone pregnant, I'm going to assume you mean the rest of it and just say—I don't know. I guess I've got about two hours left to figure that out."

***

"First Class, Carol? For a two hour flight?"

Carol relaxed into the leather seats, tightening the seatbelt around her hips, and turned to give Tommy a smug little grin. "Did you want to squeeze those shoulders into coach? I'm sure you could find a seat between a crying child and handsy soccer mom if you really wanted to." She smoothed her skirt over her knees, and pretended not to hear Steve's laugh disguised as a cough from two rows forward. She'd booked him and Robin in first class too; she was a bitch, but she wasn't that much of a bitch.

"Okay, you've got a point." Tommy leg jiggled up and down as he shifted in his seat. Some part of him was always moving when he was nervous, and Tommy wasn't a big fan of flying. She put her hand on his knee to still it. "Thanks."

"Don't mention it." She kept her hand on his knee as the flight attendants went through the pre-flight safety routine. Ahead of them, Steve and Robin had their heads together, whispering about something. "I almost thought they weren't coming."

She hadn't let herself admit that while they'd waited at the gate, but now that they were all on the plane, heading for the next leg of the plan, she couldn't help but say it out loud. The entire thirty minutes they'd waited for Steve and Robin, with each minute ticking past louder and louder in her brain, she'd felt the knots in her stomach twist and churn as the plan fell apart a dozen different ways. Then—there they'd been. Dashing through the crowd, arguing loudly, Robin almost tripping over her own feet in a way that shouldn't be endearing but was, and Carol had felt the knots unraveling. Because the plan could go ahead—that was all.

"Me too." Tommy's voice was low, and when she turned her gaze away from the bowed heads in front of them she saw that he was staring exactly where she had been. "But they're here. We're here. We're all…here."

There was something in his voice that matched the way he'd refused to talk about whatever had happened with Steve last night that she wanted to pick at, but before she could the plane began to taxi down the runway. Not now, she decided. She'd give him the two hours to Chicago, and however long it took to get Steve and Robin fully up to speed, but by this time tomorrow she was going to know exactly what had gone down between them, and then she'd figure out what she was going to do about it.

Twenty minutes later, when the fasten seatbelt light chimed off, Carol squeezed Tommy's knee, and murmured, "Be right back," on her way into the aisle. Tommy gave her a knowing look, then returned to his cloud gazing. His knee began to jiggle again, finger tapping out a song only he could hear.

She ignored that, and headed towards the front of the plane. Robin and Steve were still whispering as she passed, but stopped when she slowed by their row. In eerie unison—she wasn't convinced they weren't twins separated at birth, actually—they turned to look at her.

"Just thought I'd say hello. We didn't have time for pleasantries back at the gate," she said, ignoring the annoyed looks from the sixty-something businessman in the row adjacent to Steve and Robin. "How was your night? Sleep well?"

"Someone forgot the alarm," Robin said, with an elbow to Steve's side. "And just had to dry his hair before we could leave, and didn't leave the rest of us time to shower."

"Well, someone shut the curtains all the way instead of leaving them open a crack, the way someone else suggested."

Steve's bitchy tone made Carol want to smile, so she focused on Robin instead. She'd promised Tommy she wouldn't be angry at Steve anymore. She'd said nothing about acknowledging his existence unless she had to.

"You look good for just rolling out of bed." She leaned in, tucked in the tag that had been sticking up from the back of Robin's shirt. Robin's skin was soft beneath her fingertips. "Now you're perfect."

"Oh for—" Steve muttered, then pulled the in-flight magazine from the seat back in front of him and pretended to read it.

Carol continued to ignore him. "Since we didn't have time to strategize before the flight, I figured we'd head back to ours when we land. There's a few things we still need to go over." She paused, then broke her Ignore Steve rule. "We'll need you for that, actually, since it involves you, your mom, and Sunday Brunch."

Steve stopped pretending to read the magazine. "That's why we had to fly back today." It wasn't a question. Sometimes he was quicker on the draw than she wanted him to be.

"Yes. We don't have a lot of time, Steve, and she has her monthly brunch tomorrow." She let him fill in the blanks there; the gala was in a week, they didn't have time to wait for the next brunch. "But like I said, we'll strategize when we land. For now," she leaned down to reach across Robin for the magazine Steve had been reading. She took it from him, then drew back just enough to hand it to Robin. "Enjoy first class."

Chapter Text

O'Hare at the best of times was a nightmare to navigate—O'Hare before noon on a Saturday rivaled the Upside Down. As they exited the airport to stand in the massive taxi queue, Steve thought it something of a miracle Carol hadn't put her roller derby skills to use during their trek through the crowds. More than once he'd caught her sizing up groups of travelers, most likely weighing the pros and cons of body checking them to clear the way. The cons must have won out, as they'd made it through without incident.

He was man enough to admit he was disappointed about it. Watching her body check a family of four on their way to Disney World might have made his head stop spinning for a minute. At least it would give him a whole other set of problems to deal with, anyway.

"We could just take the L," Robin said, as they shuffled forward in the line. "A taxi into the city is going to be murder at this time of day."

Carol pinned her with such a glare that she took a step back. Steve steadied her.

"A taxi is faster. I'm not sitting among the unwashed masses for over an hour."

Robin started to say something, probably about to go off on a tirade about classism—he'd been present for many spirited discussions between her and Nancy over the years he could probably give a whole presentation about it by now—but he elbowed her.

"Unwashed masses aside, I don't want to take an hour either. We need answers. A taxi is the fastest way to get them."

Robin deflated, but didn't look happy about it. "Fine." She crossed her arms, but there was no more arguing as they waited their turn.

The cab ride itself was uneventful, the only remarkable part about it came when Carol gave hers and Tommy's address to the driver.

"Leland Street? That's basically around the corner from us," Robin whispered to Steve.

"Buckley, it's a small car. I can hear you," Carol said from the other side of Robin. Tommy had elected to sit in the front rather than squeeze back here with the three of them. "And I'm aware. Your address was as easy to get as your phone number."

"I'm really glad she's on our side."

Robin didn't bother to whisper this time, and Steve caught Carol's smile out of the corner of his eye. She hid it quickly, but it'd been there. Something to file away for later; in all his anxiety around his dad and the kiss with Tommy, he'd neglected to dig into whatever was going on between Robin and Carol—and he hadn't missed the very specific vibes that had been flying between them on the airplane. Now he wondered if Carol's interest was genuine, and not just a way to ignore him. She hadn't been subtle about it.

He had to wonder though, what were the chances that all three of them had turned out queer. It was wild, wasn't it? Something to ask Robin later, when there was time to examine that page of the playbook.

The drive into the city took a half hour that they spent mostly in silence, except for the cab driver and Tommy who struck up a friendly argument around the Cubs and White Sox, and which team had the better World Series chance this year. Tommy was adamant it would be the Cub's year, while the driver was going hard for the Sox, despite the lack of star power on the roster. Steve thought neither would make it, the Blue Jays were looking strong, but he didn't have the energy to engage, his mind was too busy thinking about his dad, the heist, and the idea that Carol expected him to confront his mother at brunch tomorrow.

Robin must have picked up on his thought spiral, because she took his hand and didn't let go until the taxi pulled up in front of a pleasant, three-story greystone apartment building. There was the general chaos as they all exited the car and Tommy paid the driver, and then Carol was leading the way inside and up the three flights of stairs.

"Elevator's broken, but there's a great roof terrace," Tommy explained, as the women went up ahead. "I'm pretty sure Carol had something to do with the elevator. Something about good spot for an ambush, and stairs being a better ass workout anyway?"

"Does she expect a lot of ambushes?"

"Plans for everything, our Carol."

Steve let out a deep sigh. Our Carol. It's what he and Tommy had called her for so long, when they'd been kids. "I don't think she's my Carol right now." He glanced up the stairs, where Robin and Carol were having a conversation too low for him to hear. "She's very angry with me…why aren't you?" He had been yesterday, before the kiss, after. Steve was sure of it.

Tommy was quiet for a few stairs. "I decided not to be. Not right now. I reserve my right to be angry with you later, but right now…" More silence as they rounded the second floor landing. "We have more important things, and I kind of just don't want to be anymore." Tommy's voice had dropped to a whisper, and he'd turned on the stairs to at Steve, who was on the step below him. The dim light from the wall sconces washed out his freckles, and framed his eyes in shadows, but the familiar smile on his face was still visible.

Not sure what to say to that, knowing it was more than he deserved after years of silence and avoidance, Steve acted on impulse, Tommy's soft smile, and an empty stairwell—Robin and Carol were a full flight above them now—and gently pushed Tommy against the wall.

"I can live with that," he whispered, and closed the distance between them. He kept the kiss light this time, not as desperate as the night before, one hand resting on the wall beside Tommy's head and the other at his hip. "Means I can do this a lot more without worrying about you clocking me for it."

"Thought we settled that last night." Tommy's breath was warm against his lips, even as he pulled Steve closer. "We're too good at fighting now, so this is much better for our continued physical health."

"You've never been as funny as you thought you were," Steve said, before going back for another taste, then another. They were short, experimental kisses, just teasing out what Tommy liked, how his body felt against his own, and Steve thought he could stay like this for hours. "Fuck…we've got to—"

"Hey, lovebirds, we've got a timeline. Get your asses up here before I make you regret being born."

Carol's voice broke them apart, and Steve rested his forehead against Tommy's for a moment. They stood, grinning at each other, before Steve drew back enough for Tommy to move away from the wall.

"Like I was about to say. We should get up there before Carol sends her own ambush squad for us."

"Pretty sure I'm her ambush squad, but yeah, let's go. We've got a heist to plan."

***

"How long are we going to give them," Robin asked, not even trying to hide the way she was taking in every detail of Carol and Tommy's apartment without shame. Carol had violated federal laws snooping on her and Steve, Robin was owed a little snooping of her own. "You know they're making out down there, right?"

She wandered over to the nearest bookshelf, and started browsing. There was a surprising number of computer science and math textbooks, along with general mystery novels and a whole shelf on U.F.Os and alien abductions. Robin picked one up to skim through, wondering if it was Carol or Tommy who believed in aliens.

"This is better in German," she decided, placing it back on the shelf. "They're missing some context in this edition."

"I'll be sure to tell Tommy."

Well, that answered that question. "I've got a copy. He can borrow it." She glanced towards the door. "Do you want to fetch them, or should I?"

"I'll handle it." Carol opened the door, and moved into the hallway to the stairs. With little care if the neighbors would overhear, Robin heard her threaten them, then return to the apartment with a satisfied grin. "They'll be right up. Come on, I've set everything up in the dining room."

The layout of the apartment was similar to hers and Steve's, with the living room at the front, bedrooms along the hallway, and the kitchen and dining room in the back, so Robin followed Carol down the hall. She was only a little disappointed that the doors to the bedrooms were closed, though the temptation to take a quick peek into the bathroom was tempered only by the sound of the front door opening and closing; she didn't think Carol would tolerate anymore delays in the planning portion of The Chicago Job—she still thought Operation: Hot Racks was stupid—and there would be more time for snooping later.

"All right, let's see what you've—" Robin broke off as she entered into what would be a beautiful dining room overlooking the pretty backyard, if it wasn't currently doubling as some sort of combination of police bullpen and conspiracy theorists underground lair. "Got here."

There were three rolling cork boards set up at angles, each covered with papers, photographs, maps, and a dozen other pieces of information. There were different colored strings connecting different areas, creating a dizzying maze of information that was, frankly, astonishing as Robin got close enough to see what was there. She'd known from the night before just how much Carol—and Tommy, she assumed—had put together, even without all the pieces of information, and knowing nothing about the Upside Down, and had seen for herself in the documents they'd brought, the evidence, but seeing it all laid out in full color, with names and dates, pictures, bank accounts, who was connected to whom and to which shell company was—

"Incredible," she breathed out, eyes wide, as she traced a red string from Steve's senior year photo to her own. "Carol, this is—"

"Fuck."

Steve's voice broke into her mesmerized inspection of the boards, and she turned to see him staring, with the same wide-eyed amazement as she felt, at the fourth board. It was the only one without dozens of pieces of paper, and no string, and was just a simple outline with a few key players pinned in place.

"You've really planned every step of this, haven't you?"

"I told you. I've been thinking about this for years," Carol said, without looking at him. She'd placed her bag on the table, and was unpacking with brisk movements. "We're going to have to adjust a few things to account for the insane information you provided, but the main steps are still there."

She spread the notes she'd taken out on the table, stepped back, turned to look at the boards, then back at the notes. She did this a few times, and Robin decided she was working out where to fit in the new information. Then, with a nod to Tommy, she started unpinning string, moving it around, adding notes and pictures, murmuring to herself at a rapid pace too low for Robin to make out, until she had the strings back in place.

"Okay, I think that's right. Buckley, does this look like the general timeline? From the experiments in the '70s to Byers' abduction in '83? I think I've got everything after that in the right order, and the major players where they need to be—Brenner, Owens, Creel." She gestured for Robin to come over, then glanced at Steve. "I guess you'd be helpful too. I need you to see if you can place your dad in the same general vicinity as any of their known whereabouts. Business trips, times he was in Hawkins, meetings. Whatever you remember. Tommy, same thing. The more we can connect, the more we know what we're looking for when we get in there."

They spent the next hour going over the timeline, and when they were done there was no doubt about any of it—Richard Harrington had, at the very least, known that some very shady things were happening at Hawkins Power and Light and Starcourt Mall, but had turned a blind eye in favor of hefty profits. They'd also linked him and Robert Hagan, who hadn't gone into business formally with Harrington until after Starcourt, to similar shady deals across the country. Before then he'd been strictly into land development in Indiana, and Carol theorized he must have come across the shady mall permits and blackmailed Richard into sharing the wealth.

"After the earthquakes it looks like they divested of those other properties pretty quickly, except for one," Carol said, following a yellow string and tapping a photograph of a beautifully modern skyscraper. "The new Harrington and Hagan headquarters right here. In Chicago. Isn't that convenient?"

Steve, who had given up looking at the boards and was simply laying on the floor now, staring at the ceiling, tilted his head sideways to look at her. "You don't think they've got Upside Down related stuff going on there, do you? Everyone involved in that is dead. It's over. The alternate dimension is closed. There's no more secret branches of the government experimenting on children." Steve's voice rose with each denial, and Robin sat down next to him, and took his hand.

"Oh Steve. You can't really believe that the government just closed up shop on something like this, right? You're not that naive. Please tell me you're not." Carol crossed her arms and glared at him. "Just because they failed in Hawkins, doesn't mean they stopped trying. What was Nevada, if not them trying again? All those other deals your dad made? They're all Hawkins, or different versions of it."

Steve shoved himself into a sitting position, and shook his head. "No. If there were others, they were shut down. Hopper promised. It's done." Robin knew that tone, the one Steve got when he desperately wanted to believe something was true. She wanted to believe it too. "So, whatever you're thinking, you're wrong. Whatever my Dad and Tommy's have going in Chicago, it's not connected. We'll do the heist, take them down, maybe even expose them for fraud and illegal dealings, and take all their money, but whatever they've got going now, it's not the Upside Down." He squeezed her hand, then pushed himself to his feet, pulled her up after him.

Carol seemed like she wanted to argue, but Tommy put his hand on her arm and Robin caught the small head shake he gave her. She could read the body language: not now. For some reason, Carol listened.

"Fine. Live in denial." Well, mostly listened. "Let's go over tomorrow." Carol whirled away from the conspiracy board and moved across the room to the less crowded timeline. "Your mother's monthly brunch."

Steve took a moment to compose himself. "At the Drake," he filled in. "Where I have a standing invitation to join her, if I'm ever in the area." Robin could hear Diane's inflection in the end of the sentence, her jaunty little laugh, and the unspoken awareness that the invitation was an empty one.

"Well. You're in the area. Looks like you'll be joining her."

***

They spent three hours going over plan. It wasn't a complicated plan, but there were several steps of varying importance: the brunch, shadowing Richard and Robert throughout the week, all leading up to the gala, where Steve and Robin would be invited guests, Tommy would be part of the waitstaff, and Carol would be part of the press core allowed special access to cover the event. She had the credentials for her and Tommy already, set in place months ago due to the security access—all they needed now were the invitations for Steve and Robin, and there wasn't time to forge them.

Everything hinged on the gala, because, after extensive amounts of shadowing and piecing together the regular schedule of the office, the only time both Robert and Richard would be in the same room at the same time, leaving both their private offices and all the other high security areas of H&H Associates empty except for a skeleton security detail. It was their best and only window to get in, get what they needed, and get out, without tipping anyone off as to why they were there. Which made the Step One: Mother's Folly the most important step of all.

Carol outlined the main idea again: Steve would surprise his mother for brunch, and because she would be surrounded by women she wanted to impress, she wouldn't be able to get out of it when Steve mentioned looking forward to bringing Robin to her first gala.

"Really play up how excited you are to introduce her to everyone, now that you're here in Chicago on a permanent basis," Carol instructed. "It's important you make it clear you're a set; if you have to play up a romantic angle, be ready to do that. Those ladies are gagging for a wedding; there hasn't been a suitable one this season and you and Robin would fit the bill."

"Do you think a fake engagement for a heist ranks higher or lower than the time we pretended to be fake married in Vegas to get the free room?" Robin quipped, which got a laugh out of Steve. He didn't respond, or look away from the board, but Robin persisted. "I think this ranks lower; we got the free room and a shrimp buffet that time." This got an even bigger laugh out of Steve, and as Carol was ignoring Steve she had a full view of Robin's relieved smile as the tension in the room lessened just a bit.

Carol might be ignoring Steve, but she was glad that too; she needed him on his toes, not sulking over the idea that his dad might be covering up more than shady real estate. That there might be—probably was—a secret, experimental laboratory under the office building where the gala was being held

"You got food poisoning."

"Still higher than this, because your mother wasn't there."

"Robin…Jesus Christ." Steve let out another snort of laughter, leaning into Robin for a moment. "She—is who she is."

"No, I think Buckley's got a point," Tommy broke in, from his position on Steve's other side. "I hate to be the one to tell you this but your mother is a full-on bitch."

Somehow they'd arranged themselves with Steve in between Robin and Tommy on one side of the table, and Carol on the other, as if she were a teacher giving a presentation.

"Back to Mother's Folly—"

"Carol didn't let me name any of the steps, if you were wondering," Tommy interrupted, but Carol continued as if he hadn't spoken.

"During the conversation you just need to get her to agree to courier the invitations to your apartment on Monday. Do whatever you need to do to get them." Keeping these three on task was giving her a headache. Maybe she was acting like a teacher right now. "Everything after that hinges on those invitations."

"So you've said five times now." Steve rubbed at his eyes, then ran his hands through his hair. "Carol, we've gone over this for hours at this point. Unless you've got anything new to add, I don't see what can be improved by doing anything else today." He pushed away from the table and stood. "And I can't exactly go to brunch like this."

She eyed him, his rumpled travel clothes and shadowed eyes, and sighed. "Fine. Go home, shower, get rest. But be back here by nine tomorrow. We'll go over it one more time, and I'll fit you with a wire." She smirked at the twin looks of surprise she got from both Steve and Buckley. "Oh, you wanted to go in with no eyes and ears on the outside? Think of it this way. If you start to fuck up, I can course correct as we go." Maybe that was mean, and crossing the 'don't be mad at Steve' line she'd promised Tommy she'd stay behind, but this was his first con. She was just being proactive.

"Thanks, Carol. I feel so warm and fuzzy inside."

Steve's bitchy tone made her want to smile, as it always had, so she turned to study the board instead. Point to Steve for that one.

"Tommy should go with you, Buckley can stay here." Carol was surprised by her own suggestion, and glad she was faced away from the room for it. "I just mean, that way if there's any issues or questions, we've split the group. One of each."

"Smooth recovery," she heard Tommy mutter, and if she'd been closer, she'd have kicked him. "But that works for me. You okay with that, Buckley?"

"Uh, yeah. If it's okay with Steve, it's okay with me. He can bring me a change of clothes in the morning."

Steve was quiet for a moment, and Carol pictured him having a silent conversation with Robin. She figured it was similar to the silent conversation Tommy was having with the back of her head. After a minute he said, "Okay. That's fine. We'll tonight to decompress and hit it fresh in the morning."

"Do you ever run out of jock phrases?" Robin asked. "Though I think that's better than the time you told Lucas that he'd never find a way to win if he didn't have confidence."

"Hey, that was a quote from Carl Lewis, and Max went to prom with him, didn't she?"

"Okay, as amusing as this banter is, if you're going, go." Carol didn't think she could take another minute of their little stroll down memory lane and keep her promise to Tommy to not be angry with Steve. For all she thought she'd worked through that little resentment last night, the easy familiarity between Steve and Robin still made her think of scratching the other woman's eyes out. She pushed aside the little voice that she should be the one trading these little memories with Steve, not a dweeby band nerd. "Buckley, you're welcome to crash on the couch, or with me. I don't think you want to risk Tommy's bio-hazard of a bedroom."

"Fuck you Care," Tommy said, but dropped a kiss to her head as he walked by. "Thank you. For trying." He squeezed her shoulders, then to Steve said, "Let me change out a few things in my go bag real quick, then—have you tried that new pizza place on Ashland? We could grab a pie on the way to yours? Carol doesn't let me get pineapple and anchovies—"

"What makes you think I will? You know it's anchovies and sausage or bust—"

Carol ignored the rest of their bickering as they exited the room, playfully shoving each other through the door like they were fourteen again, and went back to studying the board.

After a few minutes of silence, she heard the front door open and close, leaving her alone with Buckley.

"So…" Robin's voice broke the quiet, and Carol turned to look at her. "Even money says Tommy doesn't actually need anything to sleep in."

It was enough to pull Carol out of her bad mood, and she couldn't help the laugh. "No bet, Buckley. I'm not an easy mark. You can thank me however you see fit for saving you from having to hear whatever they get up to tonight." Which, Carol reflected with disappointment in herself, would have been a much better save earlier than what she'd come up with.

"I'll try to think of something." Robin was quiet for another moment, lost in her own thoughts. "Hey…I'm sorry, that, uh, this is…getting weirdly complicated? Kind of? Like, we talked last night, and I thought we were getting to an okay place—at least you don't seem like you want to scratch my eyes this morning, or not very often,—but today there's a whole, like, vibe between you and Steve, and Steve and Tommy are totally going to bone tonight, and then you add in the heist and the Upside Down fits in and there's me and you…and just….it's weird, and I know there are Big Feelings from everyone, and it's a lot—"

"Is there a point in your rambling?" Carol interrupted, with less venom than she she'd and with genuine that Buckley might actually run out of breath.

Robin drew in a breath, held it for a three count, then let it out slowly. "Just that I wanted to acknowledge the weirdness, because there's no getting past it if we ignore it, the weird will just get weirder, and then it'll be too weird to get past." Robin paused, then said in words almost too rused to be understood, "And I want to get past it, because I think we could be…friends."

The pause before friends was not something Carol was able to deal with at the moment, so she did what she did best, and deflected. "That's a few too many weirds in one sentence, Buckley."

"I know." Robin looked relieved that Carol wasn't going to pick at anything else that she might have implied. "Weird gets even weirder when you say weird so many times."

"Stop saying the word," Carol said, but it was with a laugh. She hadn't expected to laugh quite so much with Robin Buckley. It could be a problem. "But fine. I acknowledge the strangeness of the circumstances."

"Good workaround." Robin grinned the pretty little grin again, and Carol ignored the fluttering of her stomach. "And how about we start getting past it by you calling me Robin?"

Carol looked at the boards again, for a long moment, then back to Robin. Sighed.

"Fine. Robin." She turned fully towards the other woman. "Steve might have had a point. Let's call it for now. Get some food." She considered the evening ahead of them for a minute, and came to the conclusion that there was nothing heist related that could be accomplished until after the brunch. "You have your skates with you?"

Robin's look of confusion was almost as cute as the grin. Carol ignored that thought.

"Yeah…where else would they be?"

"Whatever, the point is…you ever been to the rink near here?" Robin nodded. "It's Saturday night." She waited for Robin to catch on, and knew she had when the other woman brightened. "And I saw a flyer last week for open roller derby exhibitions for tonight. And that sounds really good right now."

Robin laughed. "Yeah. It really sort of does. Food first though. I'm starving."

***

The Drake Hotel was a Chicago institution, with magnificent views of Lake Michigan, and a prime spot on Magnificent Mile and Lake Shore Drive. Steve stood across the street, fiddling with the sleeves of his sport coat and trying to ignore the unfamiliar feeling of the wire—and wasn't that a bizarre train of thought—beneath his shirt. In his ear, he heard Carol scold him for messing with the audio, but ignored her. He had to, because all his focus needed to be on controlling his anxiety at the thought of seeing his mother for the first time in over a year.

"Okay, you're clear to go, Steve. Diane's car just pulled into the valet," Carol said in his ear. Tommy, who was their eyes and ears at the valet station, must have reported in via the preset signal with Carol. "If you time it just right, you'll catch her before she gets to her table, but after she's been seen by her society cronies."

Making it too late for her to brush him off, Steve finished, and made his body move forward. "If you don't have confidence, you'll always find a way not to win," he whispered to himself—and Carol, he was reminded as she told him to focus up and to stop quoting Olympic athletes—"Maybe you should give Robin the mic."

"Not happening. Remember the plan. If things go wrong, I'll course correct."

Steve rolled his eyes instead of answering. They'd already been over this last night, and twice more this morning when he and Tommy had gotten back to the Leland St. apartment. Not even the morning sex afterglow had been enough to keep the annoyance at Carol's continued digs from building up. He'd almost mentioned how much she reminded him of Nancy; only Robin stomping on his foot had stopped him. How she'd known what he was about to say, he wasn't sure. Sometimes he regretted the almost psychic connection they'd developed.

There wasn't time to think about Carol and how deal with her, as he stepped into the lobby of the Drake Hotel for the first time since childhood. He'd been ten the last time he'd been in Chicago with his parents, for business trip over New Year's he was pretty sure, and there had been a party here. Mostly he remembered a lot of drunk socialites pinching his cheeks and calling him a "little gentleman". He'd hated it the entire time, wishing instead he was back in Hawkins at Tommy's house, piled together with Tommy and his brothers, while Mrs. Hagan made hot chocolate and let them watch Kung Fu movies until well past midnight.

The lobby hadn't changed much in the years since, all old money elegance and the subtle feeling of being judged by everyone in the area. Steve squared his shoulders, and quickly scanned the area. He saw his mother almost immediately. Diane Harrington wasn't a tall woman, but she was a woman with presence. Her hair was perfectly styled in a straight cut to her shoulders, the glossy sable subtly touched up by her hairdresser to hide any gray. She was wearing a dress Steve was pretty sure he'd seen some movie star wear to a film festival, or at least in the same style, with open toed-sandals.

"She's going for Sharon Stone, I think," Carol said, and Steve fought the smile that threatened to form at the amount of judgement her tone held, even through the scratchy connection of the wire. "She's about a decade too old for that haircut, but you should tell her it looks nice."

"I know how to handle my mother," he muttered, ducking his head to avoid anyone seeing him talk ot himself. "Now, be quiet and let me work my magic."

"Gross." But she didn't say anything else after that, and Steve waited until his mother waved at a small crowd of women, before moving into her view.

It was obvious the instant she saw him. Her posture got even stiffer, and the smile dimmed for a moment. Even from his position he could see the surprise and displeasure in her eyes, before she schooled her features and outstretched her hands towards him as he got close.

"Steven, what a lovely surprise," she said, offering her cheek for him to kiss. "Was I expecting you?"

"Not exactly," Steve said, his voice just loud enough to be overheard, but not too loud to be socially unacceptable. "But I couldn't help myself. I knew you'd be here, and you've always said it's an open invitation to join you and your friends for brunch if I'm in the area, and Robin and I are here full time now so…" He ducked his head, and made himself look both bashful and guilty, making sure the table of middle aged socialites could see the full effect. "I felt bad that I hadn't made the time yet, so I thought I'd surprise you. You don't mind do you?"

Diane considered him for a moment, then looked over at the table of influential Chicago wives, and smiled. "Of course not, darling." She turned to the maitre'd. "Charles, could we get another setting for my son? He'll be joining us today. We do apologize for the last minute inconvenience." Charles made the appropriate of course it's no problem Mrs. Harrington sort of noises, and within minutes they were seated with the others.

Steve realized almost immediately that they'd miscalculated. It was easy enough to engage his mother's friends in conversation, but every time Steve met his mother's eyes he felt like she was looking right through him. It was clear she sensed some kind of ulterior motive to Steve's sudden appearance, and he couldn't blame her. They'd barely spoken for a year, he hadn't seen her since last Mother's Day, when he'd turned down—again—a position at the firm, and she'd been icing him out ever since.

She was going to continue to ice him out, even as she played the doting mother to her friends.

Does she know, he asked himself, silently giving voice to the question that had been lurking in the back of his mind since Friday. She'd always stayed out of Richard's business dealings, preferring to spend her time dealing with the social aspects of being The Harringtons, as she put it, but now—he had to wonder how much she actually knew.

"You're losing her," Carol's voice snapped in his ear, pulling him into the conversation. "Brunch is half over, and you haven't even brought up the gala."

Steve took a sip from the Mimosa Shelly Carmichael had insisted he just had to try to hide his jump of surprise. He'd almost forgotten about Carol.

Thankfully, Shelly was fully of helpful moments today, as she took advantage of a pause in conversation—currently, the absolutely dreadful news that Bernadette and Philip O'Leary were on the verge of divorce—to ask, "Steven! Will we see you at the gala this Saturday? It's been ages since we've seen you at one. I just know my Eliza would be so thrilled, you remember Eliza don't you?"

Steve met his mother's gaze. She was looking at him, eyes slightly narrowed, as if she was puzzling out something important. Steve made a split second decision. This was definitely going to rank lower than Vegas.

"Actually, yes. I, uh, had hoped to have this conversation in private but, well, what better place to celebrate than here at the Drake, surrounded by such lovely company," Steve said. "I'll be at the gala, with my fiance, Robin." He paused, let the ladies squeal over that news, though Shelly didn't squeal quite as loudly. His mother, however, didn't look convinced. So before Carol could course correct, he improvised. "And I'd hoped to add a second announcement that night—and break the news that I'll be joining the firm."

***

"Oh, that clever little shit."

Robin looked up from the newspaper she was pretending to read, to look across at Carol who wasn't doing the crossword in front of her. They were tucked in a corner of the Drake lobby, out of direct line of sight of the restaurant, but close enough that there wouldn't be any interference with the wire Carol had tricked Steve out in that morning.

Which, Robin had to admit, had been extremely interesting to watch. Carol had made Steve strip down to his underwear, then taped a blocky Walkman-shaped device to his torso. Actual wires were run up to a hearing-aid type device that went in one ear, hidden mostly by his hair. A tiny mic was hidden under the lapel of his jacket. If you didn't look closely, you wouldn't notice it at all. Robin just hoped Diane Harrington would continue a twenty-five year tradition of not looking at her son closely.

"What? What's happening?" Robin hissed. She hated only hearing Carol's side of the conversation, and felt worse for Tommy, stuck out in the Valet pool, who heard none of it. How he was dealing with being the lookout and emergency muscle, she didn't know. She would be losing her mind if she didn't even get this much. "Next time, we're all wearing wires."

Carol gave her a look that she didn't need to be telepathic to read.

"Right. Quiet. Gotcha."

There were a few more minutes of silence, Carol muttering to herself every so often, but there were no more outbursts. Robin drummed her fingers on the table, shifted in her seat. Twisted around and tried to peer through the potted plants to get a view inside the restaurant.

Carol kicked her under the table.

"Sorry. This is torture."

Carol rolled her eyes.

"Make sure to mention the courier. We need those invitations tomorrow."

Robin rustled the newspaper, flipped it to the next page, then back. Drummed her fingers on the table again.

She was not made out for surveillance detail. Next time she'd offer to be the muscle.

As long as she could bring her skates, she'd be fine.

"Great, now mention again how excited Robin is, and that you're looking forward to—I can't believe you thought of this and I didn't—seeing how the business works." Carol did, Robin notice, look both impressed and annoyed, and the missing pieces started falling into place.

"Did Steve accept a job?!" Robin whispered-yelled, then slunk back against her chair when Carol kicked her again, harder this time. Robin was pretty sure she was going to get a bruise. "Stop that."

Carol rolled her eyes again, and Robin fought the urge to tell her to be careful or her face would stick that way. Instead of sitting there with thoughts better suited to middle school, Robin tried to focus on the newspaper again. There was a new ultraviolet satellite launched—maybe it would find ultraviolet aliens. She'd have to talk to Tommy about that.

"Okay, good." Carol sounded mad that she had to give any sort of praise, but Robin saw her relax just slightly in the way her shoulders lowered away from her ears. "Use this to turn the conversation away from you—yes, right. Ask about Eliza. You remember her, right? Big teeth, bigger boobs? Trevor—" Robin had a moment of wondering who Trevor was before she remembered all of Tommy's brothers had T names, and there had been a Trevor Hagan in her year, "—dated her for two months when we were sixteen—right, and she did her undergrad at Dartmouth not Cornell, the distinction is important to them—though I don't know why, neither are Harvard or Yale, and the only reason the Elizas of the world go to any of those schools is to say they went to them."

Robin wasn't sure why any of that mattered, but the lives of rich people had never made sense to her. This was the closest she'd heard Carol get to a ramble though, and it was sort of cute. She hoped Steve was having better luck tuning her out than Robin was. It was more anxiety inducing than productive to only hear part of the conversation, but she was mostly successful for the last fifteen minutes of the brunch. Longest hour and a half of her life, she decided, as she and Carol waited an extra fifteen minutes to be certain Diane and her cronies had all gone their separate ways.

The last to leave had been Diane and Steve, though they'd shared little conversation while waiting for Diane's car. Carol had a scowl the entire time, but only made a remark that Steve had gotten better at weaponized silence than he'd been as a kid. Robin wanted to poke at that more, but decided to save it. It was a question for Steve.

"Okay. We're clear," Carol said, gathering up the various newspapers and magazines they'd been pretending to read. "Let's head back."

Robin didn't know what sort of signal Carol and Tommy had worked out, she knew it wasn't another wire, but whatever it was she knew Carol wouldn't take chances, so gathered up her own newspaper and headed out find Steve.

Her stomach, queasy since they'd separated at the start the Mother's Folly portion of the operation, wasn't going to settle until she had her own eyes and ears on him.

"Hey. He did good." Carol had removed the earpiece as they walked, and tucked that and her mic into her purse. "Diane was…craftier than I expected, and that's on me. I should have expected it. She's always been—"

"A viper wrapped in glossy Barbie paper," Robin offered. She'd met Diane Harrington only a few times in the more than half a decade she'd been Steve's best friend, and each time she'd been left feeling like she'd narrowly escaped with her life. "Do you think she suspected anything?"

Carol was quiet for half a block. "She did at first, I think. It was hard, because I couldn't see her and only had Steve's responses to go on, but her questions were too…pointed. She knew he had an ulterior motive for showing up, but he played it well." Carol sounded annoyed that she had to, for a second time in as many minutes, give any sort of props to Steve's performance.

"He's always been good at reading people. He's just never wanted to use that against his parents."

Carol sighed. "I know. He's going to have to. Think he's up to it?"

It was Robin's turn for silence. "I don't know. I think so." She hoped so.

"I guess that will have to do." They'd walked a few blocks from the hotel at this point, so Carol stopped, stuck her arm out, and hailed a taxi with practiced ease. "Come on, let's get back. We've got tonight, but tomorrow—well, that's when the real work begins."

Chapter Text

Steve waited with his mother until the valet brought her car. They didn't speak. His mother was a master at uncomfortable silences; she preferred to let the other party speak first, as it would place her in the position of power.

Today, he wasn't going to give her the satisfaction of being the first to speak.

They didn't have to stand in the uncomfortable silence long. The valet—not Tommy, who hopefully, following the plan, had ditched the valet uniform and was waiting three blocks for Steve to catch up—pulled up to the curb with Diane's gunmetal gray Bentley. An upgrade from the Mercedes she'd been driving last Mother's Day, Steve thought.

"Your car, Mrs. Harrington," the valet said, with a courteous bow as he held the door open. "Would the gentleman like me to arrange for transportation?"

"That won't be necessary, Nathan," Diane said, without looking in Steve's direction. "Steve can make his way home from here."

"Very good. Have an excellent rest of your day, Mrs. Harrington." Nathan turned and gave Steve a small nod, before moving back to his post.

Steve stepped back from the curb, intending to wait until his mother had driven off to head in the opposite direction for a few blocks.

"Steven." Diane turned her head so that they were staring at each other through her open window. "You have one chance at the firm. If you fail, there will be consequences I won't be able to stop." She paused for a moment to let the words sink in. "I'll courier the invitations over to you tomorrow, along with the name of an appropriate tailor for you and boutique for Robin. Your father and I will see you Saturday."

There wasn't time for Steve to respond, as Diane rolled the window up and pulled smoothly away from the curb and into the flow of traffic.

What, Steve wondered silently, the fuck was that supposed to mean? He couldn't help the feeling that despite not being the one to break the silence, his mother had somehow still won the interaction.

He waited until his mother's car had disappeared from view, then turned and started walking away from the Drake. "I'm heading to the meeting spot," he murmured to Carol before he got out of range, then removed the earbud and mic as casually as he could and stuffed them deep into his pants pocket. If he gave Carol an ear full of static, well, it could hardly make her angrier at him than she already was, and he had other things on his mind at the moment.

During brunch he'd tried to keep his thoughts away from the glaring question of how much she knew about Richard's criminal activities. Now, as he closed the distance between the Drake and the park where he and Tommy would connect before trekking back to Leland St where the girls would meet them, he couldn't keep the thoughts from crowding into his brain. The way she'd phrased her good-bye quip was worded so vaguely that she could just be referring to his fictional job acceptance. He wouldn't put it past his father to officially disown him if he fucked up at the firm, if he were actually starting a job there. But there was the ever-present gnawing sensation in his stomach that had been growing since Friday, the idea that his both parents were tied up in the Upside Down of it all, and had been all along.

"Fuck," Steve said, and almost missed the turn into the park. "Shit."

He shook his head, tried to get his thoughts under control, and scanned the greenery for Tommy. He spotted him not far from the entrance, a pair of binoculars around his neck, and an Audubon society pamphlet in hand. Just another bird watcher out for a Sunday stroll. As Steve approached, both the binoculars and pamphlet disappeared into a nearby trashcan. Steve shed his sports coat, rolled up the sleeves of his dress-shirt, and fell into step beside his friend—lover? boyfriend? another question to add to the long list of them running around in his head—and let out a long sigh.

"Yeah, that seems about the right attitude after brunch with Diane and her pals," Tommy said. "Let's get back to the apartment before Carol's timer runs out, and can fill us all in at once."

***

Robin paced the full length of the apartment while they waited for Steve and Tommy, with such frenetic energy Carol imagined pinning her to the wall just to get her to stop. It was impossible to think with the other woman running a hole in the carpet.

"Buckley, would you just sit the fuck down already?" Carol's voice came out sharper than she meant it to, but they'd been back fifteen minutes now and Robin had been in motion for all fifteen of them. "They're not even late yet. I don't expect them back for at least another ten minutes. They were walking—remember?"

"I thought we agreed you were going to call me Robin," Robin said, but she stopped pacing long enough to glare at Carol from the threshold of the living room. "Of course I remember—you went over the plan a million times. I'd have to be an idiot not to remember."

"Don't get pissy with me just because you're worried about him. The brunch went fine, Steve held his own, and they're well within the time frame to get back. So sit down and read a book or something. Snoop around some more. Anything but the pacing. You're giving me a headache." Carol paused, took a breath. Then forced herself to add, "Please."

Robin deflated. "Sorry. I didn't mean to snap at you. It's just…Steve always gets so…messed up, after talking to Diane. I don't think he even realizes it, let alone talks about it, but it's almost worse than how he gets after conversations with his dad." She came into the living room fully, and crossed to the bookshelf, pulling a book at random.

"Steve's a grown man. Managing his feelings isn't your job," Carol pointed out. "But I know what you mean. It was always that way, even when we were kids. She has a way about her. The, how did you put it? Viper in Barbie's clothing?"

"I think I said Barbie wrapping paper, but yours works too." Robin came and sat at the other end of the couch, back against the arm, knees tucked to her chest. She opened the book to a random page, but didn't seem to have any interest in the contents. "And I know it's not my job. I don't think of it that way. Do you think of watching out for Tommy as a job?"

Carol rolled her eyes. "Of course not." Even when things had been at their worst, right after graduation and into their freshman year of college, she'd never thought of Tommy as her job. "I guess I just meant maybe it'd be nice if we could go ten minutes without mentioning Steve Harrington." Maybe the heist revolved around him to an extent, but she found that she wanted to know more about Robin-separate-from-Steve the more time she spent with the woman.

"Okay. Point taken." Robin closed the book she wasn't reading. "How'd you learn how to hack into computers? You do know how, don't you? That has to be how you got at least some of the information you did, and I saw all those books on your shelves, but I doubt they teach computer hacking in college."

Carol laughed. "You'd be surprised, actually, though it's not offered in the official course of study." She smnirked. "But, it's pretty simple—it was by accident. I've always been good with computers, with numbers, and once I got my hands on the internet, well. It just sort of happened." She wriggled her fingers in Robin's direction. "Magic fingers, you know?"

"You magicked your way into the, what do they call it? The dark web?" Robin's face was flushed as she watched Carol's fingers, in a way that made Carol feel vindicated. "You're really telling me it was just a matter of you, a computer, and the internet, and bam? You figured out the art of hacking?"

"Well, there were some trials and errors. I started small. Found some message boards. Created an alias—no you can't know what it is, so don't bother asking," Carol said, cutting Robin off before she could even think to ask. A hacker's online identity was sacred, to be protected at all costs. "Made a few friends who showed me how to get into even more secure systems, and how to put my computer science degree to work writing little programs to get even more information."

"I've used the internet a little bit, mostly for school-related things, I didn't realize there was a whole community out there for hackers."

"Oh, honey, there's communities out there for everyone. It's a wide, wild world out there, right at your fingertips."

"Everyone?" Robin had abandoned the book on the coffee table, and moved closer on the couch. "What other sorts of online communities have you found, Carol? Any I might find interesting? Any…roller derby focused, for example?"

Carol smirked, and shifted so she was kneeling faced towards Robin. "Maybe. Why? Interested discovering the wild internet landscape for yourself" Her heart was racing, and she hoped Robin couldn't hear it.

"I think I could be persuaded, if someone were to show me around."

They stared at each other, moving closer together infinitesimally slowly, and Carol was just about to close the distance for good when the door opened and Tommy shouted that they were back.

Robin scrambled back to the other end of the couch, face flushed, and picked up the book again.

"It's upside down," Carol snarked, then flopped back against the couch cushion, as the two men came through the parlor to join them. "Okay. Everyone's back in one piece. Let's take five, then Steve can fill us in on brunch, and we can go over the rest of the week. We've got a lot to do, and only five days to do it."

***

Tommy had hoped to take advantage of the five minute breather Carol had given them to kiss the tension out of Steve, but Buckley had grabbed Steve's hand and dragged him into the bathroom before Tommy had a chance to do anything similar. He scowled after them for a moment, then flung himself onto the couch, head in Carol's lap, and pouted up at her.

"Ditched for a bathroom confessional with a lesbian."

"Wouldn't be the first time." She flicked his ear in irritation, and shoved at him until he got off her. "Let them have this. She's been a nervous wreck all morning."

"That why she was reading a book upside down? Or is that just one of her special skills?" He smirked. "Or was there another reason for the red faces when we walked in?"

"No, there wasn't, because two idiots chose to ruin the moment." Carol stuck her tongue out at him. "But I suppose I can't be mad, you were right on time. For once."

"So you're saying you wanted there to be another reason for red faces?"

Carol rolled her eyes, but he knew what the expression on her face meant. She was interested in Buckley, as more than a heist partner. "I don't know. Maybe. It's complicated. Half the time I still want to claw her eyes out." She smoothed her hair off her shoulders, then stood. "It doesn't matter. We can't afford any more distractions; you and Steve fucking is the limit there." She pinned him with a stare before he could deny what had happened the night before, so he didn't even bother.

"It's not going to be a distraction, Care. If anything, ignoring it would have been the distraction."

"It better not be. I'll neuter you both if you fuck this up. We've waited too long, risked too much, to fuck it all up now."

He took her by the shoulders and pulled her into a brief, but fierce, hug. "I promise. We won't fuck this up. I want this as much as you do." She'd done most of the heavy lifting, the bulk of the research, the planning, but it was his mother they were avenging, his father who was dirty as the day was long, and his family who needed the answers. "Thank you. I don't know if I've said it recently, babe. But thank you." He kissed her forehead, and they just stood there for another moment until she pulled away.

"Okay, enough touchy-feely bullshit." She pulled herself up to her full height and raised her voice to shout, "Five minutes is up. Let's go."

It took a few minutes for everyone to get settled again, with clear views of one of the corkboards where Carol had cleared a corner of space for the brunch. In the center, there was a picture of Diane Harrington, below were pictures of the six women who had been at the brunch. They'd gone over the dossiers of the women the night before, briefly, to give Steve a refresher on who he'd be brunching with. Most of Diane's social circle were connected, to some degree, to Richard and Robert's business dealings, and Carol was not a woman to leave anything to chance. It was one of the things Tommy loved best about her.

When they were settled, Carol turned to Steve. "I heard your half of the conversation, but walk us through it start to finish. Don't leave anything out, you don't know what might be important or come in handy later. Most of these women will also be at the gala, along with spouses and children, so we need to cover all possibilities." She had her sharpie and string ready, and was looking at Steve expectantly.

"Right. Okay." Steve took a moment to order his thoughts, then began.

Most of what he went over was mind-numbingly dull, and Tommy was impressed how much he could recall—though he messed up a few times regarding which son was dating which daughter, or what committee had had a shake-up again, but Carol had enough tangential research to be able to fill in where Steve stumbled—but mostly, Tommy didn't see how any of this would be useful.

"That one didn't say much," Steve said, pointing at an image of a stately woman somewhere in her mid-sixties, if Tommy had to guess. "Uh…Charlotte, something. Who is she again?"

"Charlotte Jenkins, 67, moved to Chicago in '89. Before that she was in…Maryland," Carol filled in, flipping through notes until she found the relevant information. "Divorced, ex-husband estranged and deceased. One son, David, age 29. He's a lawyer with…" She scanned through the information, then looked up, eyes sharp. "Interesting. The firm he's with, Carlton, Abbott and Pratt, is on retainer with Harrington and Hagan Associates, though I can't find out for what."

"Why is that interesting?" Robin asked, rounding the table to peer over Carol's shoulder. Tommy noted that she stood a little too close than was strictly necessary to read the information. "You said that most of Diane's cronies were also connected in some way to Richard or Robert's business, at least through six degrees of separation or whatever. This is only like, third degree, but what's a little nepotism between friends?"

"It's interesting," Tommy answered before Carol could, "Because my dad has always insisted on keeping the lawyers in house. He's never, as far as I'm aware, hired an outside firm. So why this guy? Why this firm? And why isn't the reason he was hired and kept on retainer indicated in any of the research Carol's gathered?"

"It is a lot of research," Robin allowed, looking around at everything spread out on the table, at the three corkboards filled with red string and comments written in Carol's tidy script. "Okay, so we need to find out more about this David guy."

"And this Charlotte woman. I don't like that she was so quiet during brunch," Carol added. "Steve, do you remember anything else about her?"

Steve was quiet for a minute, thinking back, then shook his head. "I'm sorry. I didn't really pay attention to her. My mom—it's kind of hard to notice anything but her, when she's around." He ran hands through his hair, and Tommy hated how his shoulders slumped down.

It reminded him of when they'd been ten, after their first travel team basketball game. Steve had scored eight baskets, the most of anyone, but he'd stumbled late in the fourth quarter and that had let a guy on the other team steal the ball, leading to that team scoring the winning basket in the last second of the game. No one on the team had blamed Steve, but after the game Tommy remembered witih perfect clarity Diane Harrington saying, If only you weren't so clumsy, Steven. Oh well, perhaps next time. I'm just glad your father didn't bother to make the trip here for such a disappointing outcome. Steve's shoulders had slumped the same way then as they were now.

Carol seemed to be remembering something along the same lines, because she didn't snap at him the way she might have. Instead, she turned back to the board, added a red string from Charlotte to Richard, then pinned a sticky note with a large question mark.

"There's something else," Steve said, after a minute. "Something my mom said just before she drove off." He scrubbed his hands over his face. "She said—hold on, let me make sure I get it right, because I think the phrasing is actually important—she said, You have one chance at the firm. If you fail, there will be consequences I won't be able to stop." He paused to think it over, then nodded. "Yeah, that's it. Then she said she'd courier over the invitations, along with a tailor for me and the name of a boutique for Robin, and that was it. She drove off after that."

Steve's information was met with silence at first. Tommy's eyes met Carol's who looked surprised for the first time since Steve's debrief had begun. The first thread of worry was starting to weave it's way into Tommy's brain, and he saw echoes of it in Carol. Diane Harrington was a woman who chose her words very carefully, and never said anything without a very specific purpose.

"…she was talking about the job, right? The job you said you were ready to accept?" Robin's voice was high, anxious, and Tommy could tell she was thinking along the same lines as he was.

What if Diane hadn't been talking about the job?

***

"Okay, cool. So, your mom definitely knows we're up to something, doesn't she? She's going to tell your dad and the whole heist is going to be over before it begins, we should just call it quits now, before we get in over our heads. Who the hell thought we could pull off a heist anyway? Consequences she won't be able to stop? Who talks like that? Steve—your mom is a Bond villain!" Robin couldn't stop her rambling, even though she wanted to to. She hated the way Steve drew more and more into himself the longer she went on, but once the floodgates had been opened it was difficult to close them again. "Or maybe she was warning you, telling you that you had to get it right the first time, because there's no second chance. Maybe she's on our side, and like, can be an inside woman who feeds us information at a key moment, and she was just saying, don't fail because I don't think I can keep you safe—"

"Robin. Stop, please." Steve reached out and squeezed her hand, hard enough to hurt, but it worked to stop the anxiety spiral spewing out of her mouth. He turned to Carol and Tommy. "I'm pretty sure she just was talking about the job. My dad would absolutely fire me, hell, I'd lay even odds that he'd disown me too, if I fucked up on the job after blowing him off for so long. And she wouldn't stop him. That's all that was."

"We can't assume that." Carol's voice was resolute, even if her eyes were softer than Robin had seen them as she looked at Steve from across the table. Something in her had thawed in the last few minutes, but Robin wasn't sure what. "We're going to have to move forward as if Diane knows something is up. It's safer that way." She exchanged glances with Tommy. "In fact, I think we have to assume she's at least somewhat aware of portions of—" Carol gestured at the table and the rest of the gathered information. "—all of this. It was a high possibility before, and with the new information on Charlotte Jenkins and her son, I think that tips it into the very high range."

Steve closed his eyes, and rested his head on Robin's shoulder. She carded her fingers through his hair. She could see the little tension lines around his eyes, and knew he had the start of a migraine.

"Yeah. Okay, Carol. Let's assume that," Steve agreed.

He sounded exhausted, defeated, and Robin felt her eyes prick with sudden, angry tears. She wanted to find Richard and Diane Harrington, strip the skin from their bones, and then bury them alive.

Sometimes she thought she might need anger management classes.

"Look, can we stop, for now?" Steve asked, sounding as if the words were being forced out of him. He hated asking for breaks, and this was the second time in as many days that he'd been the one to call for a timeout. "I know we have to plan what to do next, that there's probably something we need to do tonight, but I'm starving and I can feel a headache coming on. I think I need to lay down awhile, eat something, before I'll be any good to you."

Carol looked like she wanted to protest, but sighed in resignation before Robin could even glare at her.

"Yeah. Okay. Let's call it for now. There's not anything we can do tonight, anyway." Carol turned and looked at the board with the timeline. "The next actionable step is to shadow your fathers on their lunch meeting tomorrow, maybe try to get into the offices while they're gone—lunch is onsite at the building, but they'll be down in the lobby restaurant, so it could work out. But—"

"Carol." Tommy interrupted, voice soft but firm. "We're taking a break, remember?"

"Right." Carol's frustration was obvious, but she didn't look angry. "Robin and I will go get dinner, bring it back. I don't think I can sit here and do nothing. That good with you, Buckley?"

Robin wanted to stay with Steve, but he pulled back, gave her a small grin and smaller nod. She searched his face, looking for any sign he needed or wanted her to stay, and saw his eyes flicker towards Tommy for a moment, before coming back to her. There was a part of her—the petty, selfish part—that wanted to stay now, out of spite. Wanted to insert herself between Steve and Tommy, before Tommy could take her place. She looked at Carol and saw a similar expression on the other woman's face, and sighed.

This was getting complicated, on a lot of levels.

"Yeah," she decided, after another moment of struggling with her inner demons. "That's good with me." She turned to Tommy and pointed a finger at him. "Take care of him, and no funny business."

"Robin, Jesus Christ," Steve said, with a startled laugh, before he winced and rested his head on the table. "Go, get the food already. How does everyone feel about Chinese? I could murder about a dozen egg rolls."

"Come on, Buckley. The sooner we're back, the sooner we can get back to it." Carol took Robin by the arm and dragged her down the hall and out of the apartment. After they'd walked in silence for a block, Carol said, "They're absolutely going to get up to some funny business. They're men; they're always up to funny business."

Robin rolled her eyes. "I don't think Steve's up to much right now. He'll probably sleep until we get back, if Tommy lets him." He could usually hold off a migraine if he caught it early enough, but Robin considered the chances of that and added, "We should stop by our apartment. If we're going to be up late planning, I can get some stuff, Steve's pills, and we can crash at yours. Head back to ours in the morning to pick up the invitations, then move on to the next step." The week ahead seemed so short; with the new information, and everything they had to figure out, she wasn't sure how it was all going to get done.

"We've got to factor in a shopping trip now. I should have expected Diane would insist you both turn up in clothing she'd approved, rather than something you owned already, or off the rack."

Robin winced. "You don't think she's going to want to go with me, do you?" She couldn't think of anything more horrifying. "Carol, I don't think I'm cut out for that!" Eyes wide, her brain started playing images of her and Diane Harrington squaring off in the middle of an upscale boutique, Robin blabbing off and ruining the entire plan before they even had a chance to try to pull it off.

"No," Carol said after a moment. "I don't think she'll go with you. I do think everything that happens will be reported back, though, so you'll have to go alone. I can't be seen with you, and it wouldn't be socially acceptable for Steve to go with you. Gender roles are strictly enforced at these sorts of things."

Robin nodded, and brought her thumb up to her mouth to chew at the skin there. Carol knocked her hand away before she could. "We don't have time for manicures, so stop that," she ordered, voice leaving no room for Robin to protest.

"Right. Okay. So. Apartment first, then food, then back for planning?" She needed concrete steps to focus on, and for the first time could appreciate Carols' attention to detail. She visualized the timeline in her head, narrowed in on step two. The Three Martini Special. "What do you think of The Chicago Job?"

Carol tilted her head, a confused expression crossing her face before falling into amusement. "Instead of Operation: Hot Racks? Why?"

"You're much better at naming things than Tommy and Steve. Mother's Folly, Three Martini Special, Ghost Ledger."

Carol shrugged, as they took the left that would eventually lead to Steve and Robin's and take them past the good Chinese place on the way back to Leland St. "It's grown on me, and I had to let Tommy keep something. It's his heist, after all." She glanced around their surroundings, and Robin realized she'd been doing that a lot since they started out.

"Something up?"

"I'm not sure. I thought I picked up a tail a couple blocks back, but I can't be sure. I might just be being paranoid." She took the next side street, keeping the pace slow as Robin tried to speed up. "Keep it casual Buckley. Just two gal pals out for a Sunday stroll, right?"

"Right. Just two pals."

"I haven't noticed anything off for a few minutes now, so I think we're okay. But…just to be safe, we'll take our time. And when we get to your apartment…" Carol patted her purse. "I'll give it a good once over, just in case."

Robin realized Carol must have packed her little bug sweeper device, and took a moment to appreciate the woman's foresight. "Were you a girl scout or something? You're always prepared."

"That's the boy scouts, Robin. But yes, I was a girl scout. I looked adorable in the little green dress, and sold more cookies than anyone in the state, three years running."

"I'll bet," Robin said, trying to keep it casual. She couldn't help but look over her should, trying to pick up on anyone following them. She didn't notice anything unusual, but she also didn't know what to look for. "We're almost at our place, but if we take a detour down to the park, we can throw off anyone following us, maybe. Lose them on the way out?"

Carol grinned at her. It made Robin's stomach swoop.

"Great thinking. Let's go."

She linked her arm with Robin's again, and pointed them in the direction of the nearby city park.

Chapter Text

Steve's head felt like it was stuffed with cotton when he forced himself out of bed the next morning. It was hell leaving Tommy, who was warm and comfortable and tempting, but he and Robin needed to be back at their apartment when the courier arrived. Which, he was forced to admit, could be any time. He wouldn't put it past his mother to pay for express delivery, just to try to catch him off guard. There was even a chance she'd have found a service that did middle of the night deliveries, in which case they were already fucked.

"Where you going?" Tommy's voice was slurred with sleep, but he'd pushed himself to his elbows. The sheet had fallen down to his waist. "It's not even light out yet. Did you sleep at all, baby?"

"Got a few hours," Steve said, and ignored the flutter in his stomach at the pet name. He could examine that later. He pulled on the t-shirt Robin had brought back him last night; it was his favorite Cubs shirt, soft and worn, just starting to fray at the hem. "Gotta get to our place. The courier." It was explanation enough. "Can't risk missing them. They'll require a signature, and we don't have a doorman."

Tommy sat up, stretched his arms up. It made the sheet fall all the way to his waist, and Steve was helpless to look away. Tommy leaned back against the headboard, eyes meeting Steve's with matching hunger. "Don't look at me that way if we don't have time to start anything," he said, with a grin that sent a thrill of lust to Steve's very core.

"I'm going to figure out your fancy coffee maker. If you're still planning to play bodyguard on the way over, you'd better get dressed too." Steve gave Tommy one long, regretful, glance, and turned to the door. Then, with a growl of frustration, turned back and closed the distance to the bed in two quick strides. "Fuck coffee, actually."

He straddled Tommy and kissed him all in one move, swallowing Tommy's groan with his lips. Tommy's hands came to his hips to both steady him and pull him closer. He felt Tommy's hard-on beneath the thin layer of the sheet, felt his own cock try to respond only to be trapped by the too-tight fit of his jeans. Steve snarled in frustration, annoyed with his past self for getting dressed at all instead of enjoying waking up with a warm, naked Tommy at his side, and reached between them to undo the button of his jeans.

Tommy stopped him. "Uh uh," he said, wrapping his hand around Steve's wrist. "We're on a deadline." He leaned in for another kiss, biting down on Steve's lower lip, before pushing him to the side enough so he could roll out from under him. "Go make the coffee. I'm gonna hop in the shower. Won't have time later." He pulled a pair of boxer briefs—Steve's, from the night before—on, and headed for the door.

Steve stared after him, a mixture of annoyance, amusement and arousal floating around inside him. It was a good distraction from the anxiety that had been most prevalent since the night before. Since Friday, if he were really honest with himself.

"You're a giant dick," Steve shouted after him, as Tommy headed into the hall. He knew Carol and Robin would hear, but figured they needed to get up if they weren't already awake. "Shit."

He flopped on the bed, let himself count to thirty and willed his semi away. It almost worked, mostly because of the jeans. "Right. Coffee." He nodded to himself, pushed himself out of bed, and headed to the kitchen.

Robin was there already, sitting blank-eyed at the table, hair pulled up in a messy half-ponytail. He kissed the top of her head, and headed to the compact espresso machine—trust Carol to have an honest to god espresso machine in her home kitchen, he thought with fondness he wasn't sure she'd welcome coming from him—he'd spied the night before. He studied it from all angles, decided it wasn't as complicated as he'd feared, and within minutes the smell of freshly brewed espresso filled the kitchen.

"If you break Dolly, I'll break your face."

Steve turned as Carol came into the kitchen, and grinned at her. She was showered and dressed, with a face full of makeup for the day ahead. She made a stark contrast to Robin, who was still blinking tiredly at the wall. Well, Steve amended, Robin was now blinking tiredly at Carol, eyes a bit wider than normal. Probably something to do with the breezy summer dress Carol was wearing, once again without a bra. Steve turned back Dolly—named for Carol's secret favorite of all time, Dolly Parton, he could only assume.

"This thing doesn't have a lot of bells and whistles, Care, and I've worked at my fair share of coffeehouses by this point. There's always one hiring somewhere." Steve had worked a number of odd jobs while Robin had finished school, and barista was one of his favorites. "I can handle Dolly here."

"We'll see," Carol sniffed, then took a seat next to Robin at the table. "I heard Tommy in the shower, so I'm glad to see you two are sticking to the schedule, rather than each other."

That broke Robin out of her morning stupor, and she made a choked off snorting noise. "Oh, ew, Carol. Please don't talk about Steve sticking it to anyone, or having it stuck to him, before I've had my morning caffeine injection. My poor stomach can't handle it!" She made a face like she'd just eaten something rotten, and shook her head to rid herself of the image.

"I was going to give you the first shot, but for that you can wait," Steve said, as the machine indicated it was finished with the first one. Despite the threat, he placed the first two cups in front of Robin and Carol, and started the second round just as Tommy came in, dressed in shorts and a dark blue shirt that showed off a good inch of his abdomen. He and Carol would look like a couple of summer tourists, or maybe university students, as they shadowed Robin and Steve back to their apartment. "Okay, Carol. We're all here. Do you want to go over the plan one more time?"

"Didn't you complain last night that you'd had enough of that?"

Carol's voice was filled with acid, but she wasn't wrong. It had been after midnight when Steve had called for another timeout, brain filled with too much information after what had seemed like the hundredth time they'd gone over things. After the girls had gotten back with the food and clothes, they'd explained about the possible tail—that had Steve on edge for the rest of the night, even though Carol had been certain there hadn't been any bugs in the apartment, and she'd insisted she'd left countermeasures in place when she and Robin locked up again—they'd gone over the entire week starting with the courier and ending with the gala.

"Just thought you'd want to make sure we had it down," Steve said. "Or at least hit the highlights."

"Fine. Today's the easy day—we go to yours, you and Robin go about your regular day, wait for the courier. Once we have the invitations, we'll see when your mother has arranged for the tailor and boutique visits—I'm sure she'll have set that up for you—then factor that in to the rest of the week. This afternoon we'll split up. Robin and I will shadow your mother at her weekly salon visit, you and Tommy will look for an opportunity to either get ears on your dads' business lunch with that Jenkins guy, or get into the offices—ideally both. Tomorrow and Wednesday, more of the same, and my money is on the shopping to be done on Wednesday at the latest. Thursday is the tricky day—it'll be the start of the setup for the gala, so we'll need to get in, do some initial set-up of our own. Friday, we need to do a test run of everything but the high security areas. We'll want to do this after hours, but not too late. Then Saturday—"

"Saturday's the gala. We work out any last minute kinks in the plan, and be ready to go by six. Gala begins at eight," Steve finished. He turned off the espresso machine, handed one of the small cups to Tommy and kept the last for himself. "Okay. That's the plan."

"That's the plan," Carol echoed. "Don't fuck it up."

***

"Shouldn't he have been here by now?" Robin called to Steve a couple hours later. She was showered now, more awake than she'd been back at Carol and Tommy's, and studying her closet. She'd left her door open so she could still talk to Steve, since he was in the living room waiting for the courier to arrive. She looked between her clothing options, and wondered why she was spending so much time on something so trivial compared to the rest of what they had going on. Then she remembered Carol and her little dress, and decided it wasn't so trivial after all. "The courier guy?"

"My mom's playing games." Steve sounded annoyed, but she heard the anxiety beneath. He was worried, like she was, that they'd already missed him. It was almost nine; Steve had expected the courier at eight at the latest. "She'll know that I would have expected an early delivery. This is her way of keeping the power in her court."

"Stop talking in sports metaphors, dingus!" she shouted at him, and heard his answering laughter.

"That was actually a lawyer metaphor. Thought I'd switch it up, keep you on your toes."

"You suck!"

She was tempted not to wear a bra—would Carol be as distracted by her as she'd been by Carol's pretty little slip dress, and the way it hugged her curves?—but decided that would be too obvious. Maybe she would take one little bit of advice from Viper Barbie, Robin decided, and try to keep the power in her court. If she let Carol know how affected she'd been by the sight of her pert nipples pressed against the silk of the dress, then that would be a touchdown to Carol.

"And now I'm thinking in sports metaphors," Robin muttered.

"What?"

"Nothing, never mind," she said, louder this time so he could hear her. "Your mother reads too much Machiavelli."

She grabbed a pair of low rise jeans, a black bra with just a hint of lace, and a black tank that would show off just a bit of the bra without looking like it was showing it off. Paired with her typical converse, she'd look good, but not like she was trying to look good. Fuck. She was over thinking things, and Carol was going to see through her in a minute.

She didn't give herself time to change her mind on the outfit, and headed back into the living room. Steve looked up as she came in, zeroed in on the tank top, and gave her a look that said I know what you're doing, but otherwise didn't comment.

"I don't think my mom reads the Teenaged Mutant Ninja Turtles comics," was how he greeted her, with a look of such innocence that she knew he'd spent her entire walk from the bedroom to the living room thinking that up. "She might watch the cartoon though."

"Proud of yourself for that one, aren't you?" She punched his shoulder as she flopped down on the couch, kicking her feet up into his lap. He caught them before she could hurt anything delicate, and gently lowered them as she settled in to wait. "So. You and Tommy. Ready to talk about it?"

"You and Carol. Ready to talk about it?"

"Not even close to the same thing," she said, and stuck her tongue out at him. Then, because she was a contrary bitch sometimes, decided to come clean. If it was the way to make him start talking, she'd bit the bullet. "We might be flirting or we might be trying to be friends, I'm not sure. Maybe it's both. Sometimes I think she hates me, and sometimes I'm so jealous of her because she's got this history with you that I don't, that I'm not sure we'll ever get there." She saw his face do something complicated, and he looked like he wanted to say something but she rushed on before he could, wanting to get it all out. "But, when you take the You of things out of it, I really like her. I think I could like her, you know? But…" She trailed off.

"The heist complicates it," Steve finished for her. "I you complicate it."

She nodded, rolled her shoulders to release some tension she hadn't been aware she'd been holding, and forged on. "Like, I look at Carol and Tommy, and I think…what did they do to make him stop loving them? Could I do that? What if I did that?" The words tumbled over themselves, and like the shoulder tension, she hadn't been aware just how heavily they'd been weighing her down until they were out.

"Robin. It's not…they didn't do anything. We all made mistakes like idiot kids, and then I let my pride get in the way of reconciliation. My pride, and the Upside Down, but…" He trailed off, a pained expression crossing his face. He rubbed his eyes, a sign of exhaustion and guilt she was well attuned to by now. "I think I let that be an excuse. I never stopped loving them, and I could never stop loving you. You're my other half, my soulmate. Not having you in my life would be like ripping part of me away. I couldn't do it, and I wouldn't let you—either of us—do it."

The sense of relief she felt hearing him say that he wouldn't let her break them apart, wouldn't let himself do it either, with such conviction that there was no doubt in her mind the lengths to which he would go to keep that promise, was so immense that she knew it wasn't a wholly healthy reaction. She didn't care. He was hers, she was his, for better or worse, until the end of time. The end. Carol and Tommy didn't change that, no matter what their history was with Steve, or what the future held for any of them, and she felt something ugly deep within her that had been growing since Friday begin to lessen.

"We're kind of messed up, aren't we?" she asked, shifting on the couch so that she was resting against him now, head on his shoulder. "Sometimes I think that we're all better, that we've put it all—the Upside Down, the torture, everyone we lost—behind us, and are coping like normal adults, and then stuff like this happens and I realize we probably never will."

He kissed the top of her head. "Yeah, I think that's pretty fucking clear by now." He let out a shaky breath. "But I think Carol and Tommy might be fucked up too. Not Upside Down, Russian torture fucked up, but fucked up in their own way."

She lifted her head from his shoulder so she could study him, taking in the thoughtful expression as he thought over the past couple of days. She wondered how weird it was for him, getting to know his old friends again after all this time, and under these circumstances, and decided it was pretty fucking weird.

He ran a hand through his hair, a nervous tell if he ever had one. "Maybe they're managing things better than us…but they're still the ones who planned a whole heist, over years, and stalked us enough to have an apartment in the same general area of Chicago." He shifted, so his head was on her shoulder now.

"I know! That's weird, right?" She carded her fingers through his hair, smoothing it back into place. "And totally not a coincidence?"

"Totally not a coincidence. I don't think Carol acknowledges that coincidences exist," Steve grinned as he said that, and it got an answering grin from her. "I think it's weirder that I'm not freaked out by it more, you know? I…kind of like that they did that."

She nodded in agreement. "Well, you're a freak in jock's clothing. I've been saying that since Starcourt." She pulled away after a moment, back to her own side of the couch, only so they could better see each other. "So…you and Tommy?"

"It…it feels like something that's been building since we were kids. Like it was always going to happen, sooner or later, but I think if it had happened—really happened—any sooner, it wouldn't have lasted and might have destroyed us for good. Now?" He paused, a thoughtful expression on his face. It was a much better look for him than the pained, anxious expression from earlier. "If we make it through this heist…I think we can make it work."

"For good?"

He nodded. "I hope so."

Before she could respond, the bell rang. They looked at each other.

"Go time," they said together.

The courier was here.

***

"…and if you're able to get into the offices, take this," Carol said. She slid a small, disposable camera to Steve under the table. The four of them were sitting at an outdoor cafe, going over last minute details before they separated for the rest of the day. She and Tommy had spent the morning in the park across the street from Steve and Robin's, lazily bird watching, while waiting for the courier. He'd arrived, all business, at exactly nine o'clock, an hour later than Steve had predicted, but well within the time frame Carol had expected. "If you're able to get a look at any files, you can take a picture. I've got a guy who will develop them, no questions asked, in about an hour."

"You've got a guy," Steve repeated, the bitchy tone Carol loved and hated in equal measures in full effect. "Why am I not surprised that you've got a guy?"

"I've got a lot of guys, and more importantly—I know how to collect and call in favors when I need them."

"That also doesn't surprise me."

Carol fought the smile, hated that she could be so affected by such simple praise from him, and was successful at hiding both only by turning her back to focus on Robin. "You and I are going follow Diane today, and if all goes to plan we'll be able to at least hear what sort of conversation she has at the salon. I planted a bug there last week, and once we're in range, it should pick up the signal."

"Think you'll get anything useful?" Tommy asked the question, and she shot him a withering look.

"Do you remember who else was in the appointment book for today? At the same time as Diane Harrington?" A photograph—developed by Carol's Photography Guy—of this week's appointment blocks had been pinned to the corkboard for two weeks now.

Tommy's eyes widened as he caught on. "Charlotte Jenkins. Shit." Tommy shot her a goofy finger guns salute of congratulations. "Good foresight, Care."

She preened at the compliment. A week ago, she'd almost thought bugging the salon had been overkill, but now she was singing her past self's ingenuity. Maybe they'd get some useful information out of it after all.

"You think they're going to spill secrets over hair color and manicures?" Steve sounded skeptical. "Even if my mom knows anything, I doubt she'd say anything incriminating in public."

"It's not about what she says Steve, it's about how she acts. I want to know how well she knows the Jenkins woman, what their deal is, and actually, you'd be surprised how much women say in salons without actually saying anything." She glanced at Robin, and the tank top that was too specifically casual to not have been a deliberate choice on the other woman's part. "It's not about words, sometimes, but about everything except the words, right Buckley?"

Robin flushed a dark red and avoided Carol's eyes. "Uh, I guess? I'm not really a salon girl, Carol."

Carol rolled her eyes, and continued this time for both Robin and Steve's benefit. "For some women, what's said and not said within the walls of their salon to their stylist and the other women there, is more revealing than you'd expect." She gave Robin a long once over, smirking when their eyes met, as Robin seemed to finally understand what Carol was getting it.

She saw that Steve caught the interaction too, and knew he'd "I don't think my mom is 'some women', but I've been wrong before so—go for it."

Carol wanted to call out Steve's reluctance to believe his mother had anything to do with any of this, but caught Tommy and Robin giving her twin looks of not now, and rolled her eyes. They were never going to get through this heist if she had to keep tiptoeing around Steve's feelings, but she'd give him today. She'd find out what, if anything, from the salon, let him and Tommy have a crack at finding something on their dads, but tomorrow? If Steve was still living in the land of denial, she was done playing nice.

"You two should get across town," she said to the boys. "Your dads' lunch meeting is set for one. Robin and I will pick up the car—I know a guy—and find a spot within range of the bug at the salon. We'll tail Diane on the rest of her errands, then we'll all meet back at Steve and Robin's tonight to regroup, and then we do it all again tomorrow."

Steve let out a long breath, then squared his shoulders. Carol recognized his expression as his Game Face—he and Tommy had practiced their game faces for hours when they'd made Varsity Freshman year of high school, and Steve's hadn't changed much since then—and this time she couldn't fight the smile.

"You look ridiculous," she said, but the words lacked the bite she'd intended to inflect into them. "You know that by now, right?"

"You're just jealous you never perfected your Game Face."

"I never needed to." She tried to regain her composure and gave him her best Ice Queen Glare, something she'd perfected by the time she hit middle school. She'd never admit to how many hours she'd spent in front of the mirror, practicing different versions. It was something she'd take to the grave. "Mine is natural."

"Whatever you say Care Bear."

She wrinkled her nose at the old nickname, and his too-knowing tone, and refused to engage further. She wouldn't want Steve to think she was enjoying herself with this little jaunt down memory lane. Instead, she stood and held her hand out to Robin. "Come on, Buckley. We've got places to be."

"Thought you were going to call me Robin," Robin teased, but let Carol pull her out of her seat. She turned to Steve and Tommy. "Make smart choices, and keep each other safe."

"She means don't get distracted by banging each other in a coat closet," Carol couldn't help but snark, then pulled Robin out of the cafe before either of the men could respond.

She did enjoy getting in the last word.

"So, do you just like throwing down little zingers like that, or is it just something you can't help? The little one-liners before the dramatic exit?"

Robin's question broke into Carol's self-congratulatory thoughts a block away from the cafe, and Carol glanced sideways to glare at the other woman.

"You can't tell me you weren't thinking it too."

"Sometimes, the inside thoughts can remain on the inside."

Carol made a low scoffing sound as she stepped to the curb to hail a passing cab.

"That's where you and I differ, Buck—Robin." She corrected herself, knowing that she was losing ground each time she reverted back to calling the other woman by her last name. "Keeping the thoughts inside all the time just leads to easy avoidance of the issues." She opened the door and waited for Robin to get in before following her, and giving the cabbie the address of where the borrowed car would be waiting. "Sometimes, you have to put on your big girl panties, and address the elephants in the room."

"The elephants being Stella and Tommy getting so distracted by lust, that they forget about the heis-house hunting." Robin didn't stumble over the name change, which didn't surprise Carol, but the close call with the rest had her studying the cabbie's profile for any reaction. When he didn't seem to notice anything out of the ordinary, she let herself relax just a fraction. "I think you're underestimating their commitment to the plan."

"Maybe, but a little reminder never hurt anyone."

Robin sighed, but didn't seem to have anything to add to that. Instead, she turned and watched the city go past out the window. Carol did the same, eyes darting around, looking for any sign they were being followed.

***

"Thanks man," Tommy murmured to Jake, the busboy who had let them in through the kitchen, and sat them in a corner table where they wouldn't be spotted by their fathers. He slid the box seats for an upcoming Sox game into Jake's pocket. A bonus payment to keep everything on the down low, and for keeping everything moving smoothly for this lunch. "Everything in place?"

"Yeah, I switched out the vase with the one Carol had sent over. Should be all set." Jake eyed Steve with interest. "So. You'd be the mythical Steve, huh?" Jake gave Steve a once over that had Tommy glaring. "Heard all about you over the years."

Steve gave Tommy a puzzled look, then glanced back at Jake. "You have?"

"Sometimes Tommy here gets real chatty after…physical activities."

"Oh fuck you." Tommy felt his face flush red. "We box at the same gym, that's all." He didn't know why he felt the need to clarify the situation; he didn't owe Steve celibacy in his past, but he didn't want Steve to think there was anything between him and Jake. "Get out of here, asshole. I don't pay you to make shitty jokes."

Jake laughed, absolutely unrepentant in the way only Jake could be. "Can't wait to see if the real version lives up to the myths, whenever you two are done with your whole Daddy Issues thing you've got going on. Call me!" He punched Tommy on the shoulder, winked at Steve, and headed back into the kitchen.

Tommy kind of wanted to follow him to return the punch, but controlled the impulse. They had a job to do, and their dads lunch reservation was in ten minutes.

"So…I didn't know you and Carol had hired minions for this," Steve said, pitching his voice low even though they were far enough from any other patrons that it was unnecessary. "But he's an interesting guy."

"He's an asshole, but a useful one. And Carol wasn't kidding about 'knowing a guy'. None of them know exactly what we're doing, of course. Jake just thinks I want to get dirt on my dad, maybe extort some money out of him." Tommy cracked a smile. "Jake approves of extorting money out of the rich. He's got a healthy little side business going himself."

"And you met him…boxing?"

"Yeah. We go to the same gym, use the same trainer. I mentioned this place was hiring when it opened, and things lined up. He's an ass, but a trustworthy one. At least as far as Carol or I trust anyone." He wouldn't trust Jake with anything more than this, and switching out a regular vase for one of Carol's little devices, but it was enough.

"So…what'd you tell him about me?"

Tommy shook his head. "Nope, we don't have time for that," he said, though they still had a few minutes before their dads would be there. "Let's make sure this is working." He reached into his pocket and pulled out the small receiver Carol had built.

He twisted the dial, got just static at first, but eventually it settled into a fuzzy but still clear signal. Just background noise now; the waitstaff was filling water glasses and placing menus, but he would be able to hear conversation at the table well enough. He passed the second receiver and earphone to Steve.

"It works on the same principle as a walky talky, so we'll both be able to hear what's going on," he said, though Steve seemed to understand already as he was fiddling with the dial and seemed to have found the correct channel. "Though, if there's a good time, you should slip out, head up to the office."

"Right. Use the opportunity they're down here to try to get intel." Steve made a face. "It sounds cooler when Carol says it, but if you tell her I said that, I'll make you pay."

Tommy leaned forward, intending to let Steve know he looked forward to finding out what the payment would involve, when the arrival of a small group of men caught his attention. His shoulders tensed as he spotted his father. Robert Hagan was the shortest man in the group, but the broadest. His face was as freckled as Tommy's was, but he'd never seen his dad so much as crack a smile. Today was no excception: he was stone-faced and almost brutish in his tailored suit.

Richard Harrington was tall, with the same rich brown hair as Steve just starting to show some salt-and-pepper seasoning. He was grinning, all charm and good humor, and wore his bespoke suit like a second skin. Tommy glanced across at Steve, who was sitting as still as he'd ever seen him. He was pale, and his fists were clenching and unclenching against his thighs. Tommy reached under the table and put his hand over Steve's, squeezing gently.

"It's okay, baby," he murmured, so softly he was afraid Steve wouldn't even hear him. "He's not gonna even notice us, and we're just gonna to sit here and listen."

Steve nodded, and took a breath, held it. Then released it even as he turned his hand over to link his fingers with Tommy's. "I know." He let out another breath, squeezed Tommy's hand once, then let go. "I'm okay. Thanks."

Tommy studied him for a minute, then glanced back over at the other two men. The third was one of Richard's longtime accountants, Jasper Farnsworth. Carol had linked him to several of the real estate deals, including Starcourt. Tommy wasn't sure if it was a case of confirmation bias, but he thought he looked like a weasel with his slicked back hair and nervous, darting eyes. He ducked his head as those eyes darted in their direction.

"Jenkins is with them," Steve said. He sounded distant, like hadn't quite figured something out yet. "There's something about him that…I don't know. I had a thought when I saw his picture, but it was there and gone, and then I had it again, but I can't place it." He shook his head. "Probably just looking for ghosts, or something."

"Maybe, but maybe not." Carol would say there was no such thing as ghosts, or coincidences. "Don't try to force it though. If there's something you know about him, it'll come."

Steve looked skeptical, but nodded. He tracked the foursome of men as they were led to their table. As they took their seats, their voices began to come through the transmitter. Just small talk, comments about the specials, Richard mentioning which wines were worth sampling. Pretentious asshole, Tommy thought. All wine tasted the same.

"Like he knows the difference between a Pinot Noir and a Merlot," Steve muttered, picking up his water glass to hide a sneer. "Asshole."

"I'm impressed that you do," Tommy teased, as Jenkins commented on the weather looking good for the weekend games.

That started a round of friendly ribbing about the Sox vs the Cubs, which lasted through the waiter coming to take the drink orders. Then it was on to golf, and other equally mind-numbing conversation topics. Tommy wondered if all business lunches were just an excuse for assholes like his father to brag about their golf game.

Halfway through the salad course, Tommy realized a flaw in the plan. It was clear that while the conversation was benign enough to give room for Steve to sneak off to the upper floors of the building, the path to get out of the restaurant wasn't clear. If he went through the kitchen, the risk of being spotted coming back into the building was too high. Richard's seat was directly facing the lobby, and he constantly seemed to be monitoring who was coming and going through security.

Steve seemed to come to the same conclusion as Jake brought them out their meals. "Looks like we're going to need a Plan B for office access," Steve sighed, as the conversation at the other table turned from golf to the gala. At least that had the potential to provide some useful information.

Twenty minutes later, as the subjects of this mission were finishing coffee and dessert, Tommy was ready to admit defeat. They'd learned absolutely nothing from this lunch, except Richard's golf handicap was only slightly better than David Jenkins', and the two men were looking forward to putting each other to the test the next afternoon at their weekly golf game.

"Well, this was a waste of time," Tommy groaned, throwing his napkin down. "Fuck."

Steve's eyes had followed the four men, and he shook his head. "No, listen," he said, and Tommy realized Jenkins and Richard had started a soft side conversation, while Robert and Jasper had moved back to talking about the weather.

"—all in place for Saturday?" Jenkins was asking. "There's no room for error, Richard."

"I'm aware, of that David. It's all in place, ready for launch." Richard sounded annoyed, and Tommy could only assume he didn't appreciate being questioned by someone young enough to be his son. "I'll remind you, previous errors did not happen on my watch."

"Let's make sure that remains true." David, to Tommy's ears, sounded amused more than anything, by Richard's annoyance. "But I'm glad to hear everything is place. I'll make the call when we're done here."

"See that you do. You'll get the best reception outside, by the alley in the front. Less interference there."

"Come on, we should get outside," Steve whispered. "It's worth the risk, to get there before he does."

Tommy glanced towards their fathers' table, and judged that they were engrossed enough in their conversation that if they timed it carefully, they could get to the kitchens without being seen. "All right. Quickly, but carefully." He threw down a few bills to cover their check, and a generous tip for Jake, then led the way as quietly as he could through the back of the restaurant to the kitchen. He risked one glance back, and was satisfied that their exit hadn't been noticed by anyone except Jake. He gave the other man a nod, then focused on getting out of the kitchen without causing a scene.

They found the alley, and had a few minutes of tense waiting before Tommy risked a quick glance into the street. The alley was adjacent to the front exit, and he had to stick his head almost all of the way out to get a good view, and was just able to spot Jenkins exiting the building in time to pull his head back in. He held his breath, hoping he hadn't been seen as the older man had glanced his way for a long second, and turned to walk in their direction. Tommy pressed Steve deeper into the alley shadows behind the dumpster, hoping they would blend in enough to not be spotted, and held his breath again as David gave a long, intense look before seeming to decide the area was clear. Once he'd disappeared from view, Tommy gestured for Steve to follow him, and they crept as silently as possible towards the mouth of the alley.

"It's me." Thankfully, Jenkins hadn't gone far and his voice was just loud enough to carry into the alley. He must have a mobile phone, Tommy realized, though he wasn't sure what else he'd expected him to have, given he was making the call from outside. "We're go for Saturday."

There was a few moments of silence, then Jenkins said, "Harrington confirmed everything is secure and in place, and assures me there won't be the same errors that we've seen in the past." Another pause, then a laugh. "I'll confirm for myself, but I've been involved in every step of this program. So if you don't trust him, trust me. I'll get it done." More silence, and Tommy hated that they couldn't pick up what, and more importantly who, was on the other end of the phone.

"Yes, I know. There's no room for another Hawkins."

Tommy's eyes met Steve's shocked ones, and he gave a little shake of his head. They couldn't do anything about it, not yet. They needed more information.

"On Saturday, it all comes together."