Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Robin’s not sure why she takes no notice of Jonathan Byers in high school. The guy is a strata below her, it’s true. Robin is by no means cool but she’s not a freak, at least. She heard the rumors and she’s ashamed to say she believed them, for the longest while. She and her friends were just relieved not to be the lowest hanging fruit for goons like Tommy H. So - Jonathan Byers, she’d think. What a creep.

Her parents didn’t help. Her dad’s never around - business trips, he says - but when he is he loves to be caught up on town gossip. That November, when poor Will was missing, all her dad said-

“It’s a shame, really. The Byers woman will be carted off to the asylum in no time, and she always gave such good discounts at the store since she’s so bad at math.”

That’s all he fucking said. Robin had frowned at the time, let out a short Dad as a kind of reproach, but he’d shrugged. “The weirdos always get their comeuppance, Robin. It’s how the world works.”

And she’d felt cold, and resolved to smile at Jonathan the next time she saw him in the corridor.

Only-

That’s as far as it went. She barely noticed when Will came back, and when the whole troop of his friends plus Steve plus Nancy plus Jonathan all missed class for a good few days the following year. She was too preoccupied with her fading obsession with Tammy Thompson, and lately a new French teacher whom she was sure was only nineteen.

But then summer rolled around, and Scoops Ahoy rolled around, and Steve rolled around-

Steve, whom she told something she’s never told anyone. She’d never have said anything, not if she was sober, but something about his easy smile- the way he slid under the stall over the filthy toilet floor-

She’s not into boys, but she thinks Nancy Wheeler was a fool to let him go.

This, of course, is before she meets Nancy and Jonathan and has to do everything in her power to prevent herself falling head over heels in love with her. Because damn. The girl can handle a gun like she’s some kind of action hero- like she’s in some shitty action movie, where’s she’s the best bit-

But she’s straight, and clearly hopelessly devoted to Jonathan (she’d have to be, to let Steve go), so Robin manages to curtail these feelings in time.

Their meeting is brief on the Night. The Night, where everything apparently goes to shit, where at least two people die (not including the Russians)-

Robin’s new to all this, but she’s pretty sure that’s not how it’s supposed to go.

But she doesn’t feel involved. They’re all grieving, so she just goes home, for the first time in days, and has a shower. Changes into normal fucking clothes. Sleeps fitfully, just because there’s still adrenaline pounding through her system. The adrenaline of running, fighting, telling Steve goddamn Harrington of all people she likes girls.

And guess who shows up the next morning?

She’s hunched over a bowl of cereal, her mom making coffee behind her, when Steve slams a fist down on the horn. She goes to the window and sees his obnoxious car and his frantic waving from the driver’s seat and leaves her cereal bowl on the counter, forgotten.

“Have fun!” her absent mom shouts behind her. Robin can’t fucking wait to get out.

“The Chief’s alive,” he says as she slides into shotgun. She gasps. “Yeah, I know. I don’t- we’re having some kind of? Party? Dustin just said to come, so-“

“So drive,” she says, voice breaking with the thrill. God, the adrenaline’s back, and it’s ecstatic. Her shower and her bed and her cereal are so fucking boring compared to this.

They arrive at the Byers’ in record time and to her surprise there’s no one there, only Joyce and Jonathan and Nancy and Will. Jonathan shrugs at her as she comes in.

“Hopper and El went back to get some stuff from the cabin,” he says. “You’re here early.”

Steve starts swearing. “Dustin- I swear to god- little dickhead-“

“Well, you’re here, so. Mom’s making breakfast.”

The first time she talks to Mrs Byers is way, way too early in the morning and the kitchen reeks of burning food. The older woman is stirring eggs in a pan with a frazzled expression, but turns to look at Robin with a smile.

“Hey, Robin. Breakfast?”

“Uh, yeah, sure,” she replies. She’s wrongfooted by Joyce’s easy kindness, because it goes so completely against everything she’s heard. And there’s nothing to mock, because from even a second in her company Robin can tell she’s formidable too. Her eyes are red and sunken with exhaustion, her hairline marred by the heavy scrawl of stitches, but she looks uncommonly happy and calm in the morning light.

“Jonathan, do you wanna make some coffee?” she asks, and he moves to the kettle.

“I really wish you’d let me make breakfast, Mom,” he says, with a long-suffering air.

She shakes her head. “Not a chance. And practice makes perfect, right?”

“Yeah, but only to a certain point,” he mutters under his breath, but there’s a fond smile teasing his lips. And Robin- well, she finds herself smiling along. There’s something ridiculously heartwarming about this family, even over something as simple as breakfast.

“Uh, Mrs Byers, did you want us to buy anything? I know you’ve been away for a few days, we can go to the store-“

Joyce shakes her head fervently at Steve’s suggestion. “No, no, we’re fine. Go sit down. You might be here early but there’s plenty of eggs to spare.”

“Really?” Robin can’t help but say sarcastically, as Jonathan lets out a help and pushes past his mom to the pan.

“Mom! Eggs!” Will yells, emerging from the corridor, wrinkling his nose at the smell. She drops her head and pinches the bridge of her nose, before letting out a rather impressive “Fuck!”

“Mom- it’s okay-“ Jonathan starts, turning from the eggs to his mom, but then she begins to laugh. Shoulders shaking, face scrunching up kind of laugh. The kind of laugh Robin shared with Steve last night, as a massive release of tension.

“Maybe I should leave it to you next time,” she says, ruffling his hair and moving away from the stove. “So, as you can see, Robin, I’m a human disaster when it comes to the kitchen. Everyone else already knows it, so it’s kind of an induction ceremony for you.”

“Huh,” is all Robin says, because she’s never met a mom quite like her.

(She remembers the sound over the radio last night, before they all remembered to turn it off. Joyce just sobbing, and sobbing, and sobbing. El screaming in the background. It’s all so different, now. Joyce smiling like nothing ever went wrong.)

They all take a seat and Jonathan comes out with round two of the eggs, not burnt this time, and the silence is filled with not unpleasant small talk. (Nevermind that Robin usually hates smalltalk.)

“So, Robin, you’re still at school?” Joyce asks, looking at her over the rim of her coffee mug.

She nods. “Yeah, uh, I’m the same year as Jonathan and Nancy. One year left.” She lets out an awkward laugh. “Got no fucking clue what I’m gonna do after that, but.” Then she freezes, because is she allowed to swear? Her mom doesn’t like it, but Joyce is so different she almost forgot she’s a mom-

Joyce just shrugs. “You’ll figure it out.”

When Robin turns, Nancy is grinning around a forkful of eggs. “Hey, uh, Steve? What are your plans?” she asks, like she’s saving Robin, who is floundering for something else to say. God, it’s like she’s really trying to make her life harder-

Steve shrugs. “My dad wants me to work at the company but right now I’m stuck at Scoops- well, I was. I kinda wanna go to college but I have no idea what for and I’m not really smart enough, so.”

“You don’t have to be smart to go to college,” Robin blurts out. Well, it’s a bit of a backhanded compliment, to say the least. Steve blinks. “I just mean- my mom went to college. And she’s not exactly breaking records, so.”

“Well, if you need a scholarship then you kind of have to have a decent gpa.” Jonathan’s comment is quiet, a little bitter. Silence descends. She notes that Nancy is shifting uncomfortably, like this is an argument they’ve had before, and Joyce’s gaze is trained on her plate.

Robin strives to think of something, anything, to say. She doesn’t want this to be where her relationship with the Byers ends - with an awkward silence and the cataclysmic social gap between them and her best friend. She sees Joyce lighting a cigarette and nearly laughs out loud, because once again this is the furthest possible from anything she’d expected.

Joyce clearly notices her looking. “What?” she asks. Is her voice shy?

“Oh, no, I just- my mom raises hell if she so much as sees someone with a cigarette.”

“Jonathan tells me it’s a bad habit,” she says, around a mouthful of smoke, glancing at him playfully. “But apparently I’m a ‘cool mom’, so.”

“Cooler than mine,” Robin mutters, and flushes when she catches Steve’s raised eyebrows. What, dingus? She mouths. Joyce is cool. Cooler than Steve, for sure.

At least the awkwardness has been alleviated. They finish their breakfast with scattered, harmonious conversation, and when she offers to wash up Joyce waves her away. “Nonsense, you’re a guest,” she says. Then Steve tugs Robin aside.

“Okay, what is going on?”

She frowns. “What, just because I’m being polite you think something’s up?”

“Uh, yeah? You’ve only called me dingus once today, what’s up with that?”

“Steve-” She sighs. His face is still a wreck, still puffy and bruised. “I get that all this is normal for you, but for me? I’m just the weird band kid who speaks a ton of languages. I don’t go portal-hopping or whatever on my days off. So what happened last night-”

“I’m sorry,” he interrupts. “I shouldn’t have dragged you into all this.”

She stares at him. “Dragged me in? Steve, this is the most fun I’ve had in years. Last night- well, it was a shock, sure, but when I got home all I wanted to do was go back and be around everyone again. My parents suck. These people-” she gestures to the house around her “-they don’t suck.”

“Really?” He seems genuinely surprised. “So you- you don’t wanna go home?”

She rolls her eyes. “Okay, now you really are being a dingus. Of course not. Dingus.”

He smirks, and just like that their balance is back.

They’re interrupted by the arrival of Hopper and El. Joyce rushes over to them like it’s been years, not hours, and by the way she lingers over Hopper Robin can tell there’s something more there. They’ve brought supplies - more food, what looks like a fuckton of food, and fireworks aplenty - the latter of which Joyce inspects with a wrinkled nose.

“Fireworks, Hopper? Really?”

“Uh huh,” he says. “Can’t have July Fourth without fireworks, and we missed it yesterday.”

“We didn’t,” Nancy says. “We had loads of fireworks.” She smirks a little.

“I mean fireworks that aren’t in aid of defeating some disgusting flesh monster,” Hopper retorts. “Proper fireworks. I bet you kids don’t even know how to light ‘em properly.”

Joyce makes a sceptical look and takes his arm, guiding him away from them. “I wouldn’t test them,” Robin hears her whisper as they round the corner.

“So there really is a party?” Steve asks.

“Yep,” Nancy responds. “You were just about four hours early.”

“Dustin, you asshole,” he mumbles under his breath, again. But Robin doesn’t really care, because this is miles better than what she’d have done instead.

“So, Byers,” she says, before she can lose her nerve, and his eyes snap to hers more than a little apprehensively. “I heard you have good music taste.”

“Depends what you consider good,” he says, and gives a nervous laugh.

“The Cure, The Smiths, Siouxsie and the Banshees,” she drops, offhand.

“Really?” Steve says, eyebrows climbing. “If I didn’t already think you were pretentious-”

“Well I guess I have good music taste, then,” Jonathan interrupts, ignoring Steve entirely. He has the same shy smile as Joyce does, Robin notes.

“Do you have any of their records?” she asks. She’s dying to touch a Siouxsie vinyl.

He shakes his head. “Just cassettes. We don’t even have a record player. Mom says Hopper does and I’ve been trying to borrow it, but he says I’ll ‘ruin it’ with ‘bad music’.” His fingers make air quotes as he speaks and she finds herself laughing along.

“Well, I’ve got a record player but nothing really to play on it. I’m gonna try and get a job at the music store, now Scoops is probably closed. I hear it does a great staff discount.”

He nods, eyes alight with interest. “What about the Talking Heads?”

“Yes, I love them!” Robin grins. “Actually, that’s one record I do have. If you wanted to come over- listen to it sometime-”

Jonathan suddenly looks uncomfortable. Nancy presses closer to his side, and it occurs to her that they think she’s hitting on him. Which only makes her want to laugh, because in what universe?

“Oh, I’m not hitting on you. I promise.”

“Really, she’s not,” Steve supplies, with what he probably thinks is a helpful smile. It’s not.

“Steve-” she starts, but Nancy interrupts her.

“Are you two dating?” she asks, and Robin groans.

“No, no. Absolutely not. No.”

Steve has the gall to look offended, while Jonathan looks on with a vague smile. “Sure, I’d love to listen to the Talking Heads with you. You know, in a non-romantic, non-sexual way.” He glances at Nancy as if asking how did I do and she bursts out laughing.

“What… just happened,” Steve says, sounding utterly lost.

“The music snobs are multiplying,” Nancy says in a stage whisper. Jonathan swats at her playfully and Robin has really, truly, never felt like she belongs anywhere more than she does right now.

Chapter Text

They set the fireworks off at noon, and watch the lights explode in an overcast sky. Hopper’s managed to find an ancient barbecue and he spends the afternoon cursing as he tries to get it to light, with Joyce tutting by his side. “I’m not sure why you expected it to work,” she says, voice teasing. “I think we bought it with the house. Lonnie certainly never used it.”

“Which is why I’m going to,” he replies through gritted teeth. Robin watches with vague amusement, and a sense of loaded relief. Today could have been so very, very different.

Both the adults are drinking beer and she has to very consciously stop her eyes from bugging out when Joyce hands her one. Then she takes it before the older woman can change her mind. “You seem like a sensible girl,” she says. “I trust you’ll keep Steve in check.” She gives Robin a secret sort of smirk and Robin watches her walk away with a warm feeling of awe.

All the kids are, predictably, making havoc. El’s still recovering from her injuries so she just sits quietly talking with Will, but Dustin’s having some sort of heated debate with Max and Mike and Lucas appear to be daring each other to do increasingly more ridiculous things. Robin feels like it’s her duty to go over there and stop them from killing each other, but she’s enjoying the show too much. Besides, Erica was her main responsibility, and Erica’s not here. Said she’d had enough of the nerds to last a lifetime - and privately Robin had scoffed. Ten is way too young to be obsessed with being cool.

It turns out Steve brought his boombox - since when has he had a fucking boombox? - and there’s a brief scuffle over who’s in charge of music. She sees Jonathan being cornered by Steve, who is pressing a cassette into his hands, and hurries over because she’ll be damned if the day is ruined by shitty music.

“Step away from the boombox, Harrington,” she says. He scowls.

“I swear to god- your music sucks-“

“I’m not having this argument with you. You listen to Cyndi Lauper, dingus. You’re not allowed to have opinions on music.”

Jonathan looks at her. “Dingus?” He’s smiling.

“You should try it out. It suits him.”

“Hey! What is this, gang-up-on-Steve hour?”

“Maybe,” she replies, and turns back to Jonathan. “Now quick, put something good on before we get overruled.”

But too late. Joyce comes over, clearly having seen the tail-end of the argument, and crosses her arms. “Nice music only, okay? Put some Blondie on or something. It’s too nice a day to listen to Bauhaus or whoever.”

“Bauhaus?” Jonathan spluttered. “I don’t- I wasn’t going to-“

But it’s too late. Joyce gives them a smile that’s a little too innocent and Steve crows as she walks away again. “See, your mom agrees with me. She has good taste.”

“She really, really doesn’t,” Jonathan mutters, but nevertheless grabs the cassette from Steve’s hand and shoves it in the machine.

“I swear to god if I hear so much as a single note of Cyndi Lauper-“ Robin glares at Steve. “You’re dead, dingus.”

“Scout’s honor,” he says, and bows. She scoffs. “But hey, what’s so bad about Cyndi?”

“I cannot believe- this. This is why no girls like you.”

He looks honest-to-god confused. “But girls like Cyndi Lauper.”

“Some. Some girls like Cyndi Lauper. But they don’t like guys who like Cyndi Lauper.”

“He doesn’t get it,” Jonathan remarks dryly. He takes a sip of his own beer as Steve moves off, face still confused, no doubt to take Dustin’s side in whatever argument the kids are having. Inseparable, those two. Robin feels disgustingly fond.

“What about The Clash?”

She turns. Jonathan’s studying her shyly from beneath his (atrociously cut) bangs. “Uh, I dunno. I can take or leave them.”

“What?! Oh man, you were so close. So close to having good taste.”

Her jaw drops in mock outrage. “One band, come on. You’re still the first person I’ve met in this town that likes Siouxsie.”

He shrugs. “True. I’m trying to get Will into all my music and he likes a lot of it but all his friends- they’re dragging him into stuff like Queen and The Pet Shop Boys.” He shudders.

Robin smiles, even as the information strikes a chord within her. Both bands with a certain image - a reputation. She files it away for later, a little cautiously. “Could be worse. My mom’s obsessed with Connie Francis. I swear it’s permanently the 60s in my house.”

He makes a sound of disgust. She takes a sip of her beer. “Didn’t know your mom drank beer,” she says. “Again- my mom won’t drink anything but gin and tonics. Martinis, if she’s feeling creative.”

He shrugs. “Yeah, well, Mom’s not really your average suburban mom. She’s younger, for a start. Had me when she was eighteen.”

Eighteen- damn. There’s gotta be a whole interesting story there, and no doubt a tragic one too, given what she’s heard. Given the way Jonathan is still looking at her gingerly, like she might bite. But a story for another time. (Robin tries and fails to imagine herself with a kid, now. At eighteen. The whole gay thing aside, it just feels impossible. Insurmountable. Managing Erica was enough for her and she’s a cogent ten year old, not a blob of flesh that can’t even talk.)

They all sit on picnic blankets to eat the slightly scorched burgers that Hopper cooked on the barbecue, off birthday-themed paper plates left over from some party of Will’s long ago. Robin douses hers in mustard and smirks when she sees Jonathan doing the same, with Nancy’s face a picture of horror in the background.

“You know that’s disgusting, right?”

“What, and ketchup isn’t?”

“At least I don’t slather it on. You eat like my brother.”

Mike looks around. “Hey, what did I do?”

Nancy rolls her eyes and Jonathan smiles. “Absolutely nothing,” he responds, eyes not leaving his girlfriend. Robin has to fight her own smile - because she can feel all her mystery disappearing by the second. Her punk-rock aura doesn’t fit too well with a grin. This is too domestic, goddamn it, and she wants a slice of it for her own.

--

Robin’s family is suburban, dull as all hell, and tries a little too hard to be cookie-cutter. Her mom went to college for something useless involving baking and sewing that if Robin didn’t know better she’d think was a degree in housewifery. Her dad is a claims lawyer who likes to pretend he’s more successful than he is, and makes a big show of travelling state to state to clients who ‘need him’. In truth he’s only one step above the sleazebags whose billboards decorate the Interstate.

And her mom doesn’t work, so their house is down the poorer end of Cherry Road. Oh, what her mom wouldn’t give to be married to someone like Ted Wheeler or John Harrington instead. But she’s stuck with shiftless, unsuccessful Tom Buckley and often Robin gets the impression that neither of her parents actually like each other. A rising bitterness fostered by hopes for success that were never realised and missed opportunities tracking all the way back to high school, where they first met.

And so Mary Buckley puts on airs and drinks martinis with olives in and invites her friends from book club over for cocktail parties that they really, really can’t afford. When Robin comes home from class or work to find them all gathered in the living room she just rolls her eyes and pushes past them, despite her mom’s calls. Robin, did you speak to your guidance tutor about college?

Robin always flips her off through the closed door of her room. (One time her mom caught her and didn’t let her have dinner, and when she discovered Robin ordering pizza over the phone she got so mad she cut the cord in half.)

It’s not the worst home life. It’s not like they’re abusing her, or each other. But her dad’s never there so it’s always Mom, her and Mom, and Mom is goddamn unbearable at the best of times.

So Robin’s thrilled to just be out of the house.

Steve has absent parents too. His dad’s actually successful, actually has to travel for work. And his mom’s a lawyer - a real lawyer, not a billboard, telemarketing scammer, but a real goddamn lawyer. Property, apparently. Only there’s not much property to sell in Hawkins, and not many people to sell it to, so she’s away a lot too.

Of course, all this is revealed only later. At the start of their tenure at Scoops they passionately dislike each other. (Not hate. Robin reserves hate for Billy Hargrove and her mom.) Because Robin is the girl who cycles to the mall like a twelve year old and Steve is the guy with a ridiculous car and even more ridiculous hair. Nevermind that Robin doesn’t really want a car. She likes her cycle rides, likes watching the concrete flash past as New Order blasts in her ears. She likes zipping past the assholes in convertibles and flipping them off as they honk at her angrily. She likes wondering how fast she can go before she has to stop.

But it’s what, day four? of their friendship? when they reach the parents discussion. They’re lying side by side on the picnic blanket, watching the stars slowly light up the fading sky on the fifth of July. Most of the kids have gone home but Mike’s still here, Nancy’s still here, El and Hopper are still here. (Robin has a sneaking suspicion these last two aren’t gonna leave any time soon.) And Robin’s lightly tipsy, mellow in the dusk, and it’s in a different way to whatever the Russians did to them. It’s peaceful, calm. She doesn’t feel like the floor is tilting under her, and the world isn’t ever so slightly spinning. She just lies there and takes in the sky and tells Steve how much she hates her mom, and he just listens with that endearing idiot face of his.

“Is that why,” he says when she’s done, “you’re practically worshipping Mrs Byers?”

“Worshippi- I am not worshipping anyone. What kind of question is that, anyway? What, are you Freud now?”

“I don’t know who that is,” he says and she rolls her eyes.

“Not important. Look, I’m not worshipping her. She’s just… way nicer than my mom. And cooler and smarter and more fun…”

She hears the rustle of him sitting up and then he looks down at her with his eyebrows raised so high they’re practically in space. “I don’t blame you, I mean she’s basically superhuman. Supermom… is that a thing? It sounds like a thing.”

“Steve,” she interrupts, because he’s going off track. Supermom is definitely not a thing.

“Anyway, she’s miles better than my mom too but my mom’s still, you know, my mom. I guess it’s just the whole Upside Down thing that means, well, Mrs Byers kind of knows more about us than our own parents do at this point.”

“Upside Down?” Robin frowns. “Oh, right, that’s your weird nerd term for the other dimension thing.”

Steve scowls. “Look, I didn’t come up with it. It just stuck, you know?”

“Whatever,” she says, and sits up too. “But like… I get it. I get what you mean. You’ve all been doing this for years now, you’ve all been part of this massive secret, and you couldn’t even tell anyone. I guess it changes your relationship with your parents.”

He nods. “But the weird thing is that because they’re never around, it’s just kinda another thing they don’t know about. And when they are around it’s weird, like we don’t even know each other. And they don’t. Know me, I mean. They still think I’m this preppy asshole I was in junior year. They think the only things I’m hiding are parties I throw when they’re away when I nearly died so many times-”

Robin looks away. Hiding things- maybe it hits a little too close to home. “Even all this doesn’t top my biggest secret,” she whispers.

She feels him move closer and he tentatively places his hand over hers. It’s weird - really weird - but somehow also really nice.

“It’s just crazy how my mom is around me all the goddamn time - too much, in fact - and it’s like you said, she doesn’t know me at all. I guess I just want-” She sighs. “I just wanna be myself. And I know that’s not really an option anywhere, but it feels more possible here.”

She’s not sure why. For all she knows the Byers could be like her parents, or worse. They could throw her out in a second. But the fact that they’re less than perfect - that they don’t even try to be - makes her think that maybe, just maybe, she doesn’t have to be perfect either.

Chapter Text

That night Robin somehow falls asleep on the Byers’ couch, while she’s waiting for Steve to stop eating the leftover burgers and drive her home. One moment she’s looking at the clock with the feeling that she should be impatient, but somehow she’s not, and the next she’s looking into Mrs Byers’ startled eyes as the woman gently shakes her awake.

Somewhere in between she has awful, twisted dreams, dreams of endless corridors and cruel, abrasive Russian. Dreams of Steve’s face being caved in. When she does wake it’s with heart pounding, breaths unnaturally loud. Joyce is looking at her like she cares, like she’s worried, and Robin has to frown.

“Sorry,” the woman says, stepping back. Her hands leave Robin’s arms and suddenly she feels cold. “I thought I ought to wake you - you were having a nightmare.”

Robin nods. “Thanks,” she says, voice still shaky. “What- what time is it? Where’s Steve?”

“Oh, sweetie, it’s about one in the morning. You seemed tired and we decided to just let you sleep. He went home.”

“Oh.” Robin struggles not to feel disappointed. He just left like that? But, she supposes, she’d probably have been more mad at him if he’d woken her up. She is tired, she notices. She didn’t realise before.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” Joyce is eyeing her carefully, and she takes a seat on the arm of the sofa, across from Robin. “Sometimes it helps to talk about it.”

“I’m fine,” she says. Joyce doesn’t look convinced. “I’m fine, okay?” Her tone is probably a little harsh, because Joyce winces. “Sorry. I didn’t- Thank you. For waking me up. It wasn’t- it wasn’t great.”

Her voice is stilted, awkward. She’s not used to talking about feelings, of all things, especially not with an adult. Especially not with a mom. But something about Joyce’s massive eyes, her open expression, presses Robin to continue.

“I just- I thought I was fine, you know? After all this stuff. The mall, and the Russians. I woke up yesterday and my house- my mom- it was all so mundane. Boring. So I don’t understand-” She breaks off. Joyce is nodding, and instead of the judgement all but native to Mary Buckley’s face there’s nothing but empathy. Robin looks down at her hands, twists them in her lap. “What happened to us- it wasn’t normal. It was scary. And I think I’m different now. Because of it.”

“I get it,” Joyce says. “God, you don’t know- after Will went missing, and then after Bob-” Her voice breaks. Robin doesn’t know who Bob is, but the specifics don’t matter. All their scars match, in the end. “The point is what happened changed all of us. Each time, and it doesn’t matter that you’re late to the party. Though that’s better. You’ve clearly got more luck than the rest of us.” Her smile is watery, and Robin matches it with one of her own. “Just- you can talk about it. To any of us, because we all know. We know what it’s like. And if you ever need anything- anything at all- you come straight here, okay?”

Robin nods. “Okay,” she breathes. And knows what the implication is. Because her own mom doesn’t know what it’s like. But Joyce does. Joyce and Steve and Jonathan do. They’ve all been through varying degrees of trauma, but whatever they’ve been through-

It’s more than her mom, whose biggest crisis is what shade of nail varnish to wear. How many olives to put in her martini.

“Thank you,” Robin says again, and there’s a smile tugging at Joyce’s lips.

“Now come on, I’ll find you a bed that’s more comfortable than the couch.” She stands up and tugs Robin up by her wrist, the touch easy and maternal. She doesn’t stop despite Robin’s (faint - her neck is increasingly sore) protests, and Robin thinks - is this what it’s like? To be appreciated unconditionally?

Eventually they find her a sleeping mat and she settles down on the floor of the living room with three pillows and a duvet like it isn’t the height of summer. (Joyce insisted.) And she stares at the ceiling til long after two, and thinks. Thinks about how Joyce is a fucking godsend (maybe Steve was right about ‘supermom’) and how Jonathan might shape up to be the brother she never had.

--

When she wakes in the morning the sunlight is flooding in, and as she’s blinking and stretching Will enters the room and stops stock still at the sight of her.

“Uh, hi?” he says, frowning at her. “Why are you sleeping on our floor?”

She sits up, shrugs. “I don’t know.”

This evidently confuses him further, but after a moment he just walks back the way he came.

She’s not going back to sleep now, at any rate, so she scrubs a hand over her face and heads into the kitchen. Stumbles over to the kettle and finds a pot of instant coffee in a cupboard which she grabs more than eagerly.

Next to the coffee sits a box of eggs. (What kind of shelf organisation-) She takes some out, finds a pan, water, vinegar. Is halfway to having a decent poached egg by the time someone else emerges - and it’s Jonathan.

“What’re you making?” he asks blearily. He’s wearing just a t-shirt and boxers and is unusually open and casual in the morning light. None of that hostile defensiveness he wears like armor.

“Poached eggs,” she says. “You want one?”

His expression is almost comical. “What are you, a gourmet chef? Fuck yeah I want one.”

She smirks and turns back to the pan, to check they’re not burning or something. She’s got a customer, now. She doesn’t want to disappoint.

“So do you have a morning mixtape? Or am I gonna have to sing, because I can’t face mornings without music.”

He smiles. “Sure.” He goes and returns with a radio, which he spends a silent moment tuning before stepping back with a victorious look. “Now this station is the only good station in Indiana.”

The radio’s sound is faint and crackly but her face lights up in a smile when she hears the opening notes of Age of Consent.

“It’s no mixtape, but it’s the next best thing,” he says. “Can I, you know, do anything? Make some toast or something?”

She shrugs. “Sure, I just fancied eggs. Do whatever you want, it’s your kitchen.” She watches him bustle around, producing bread and placing it carefully under the grill in the stove. “You’re a better cook than your mom, then,” she remarks.

He runs a hand through his hair, musses up that hideous bowl cut. “Yeah, but that’s not saying much. I mean- she tries. And I can only really do toast or scrambled eggs, so often it’s breakfast for dinner, but. We try.”

Expertly she places a perfectly poached egg on a plate and hands it to him, and he stares at it in amazement. “You’ll catch flies,” she quips, and he closes his mouth. “What? I make mean poached eggs.”

He takes a mouthful and watching him is almost obscene. His eyes almost roll back into his skull. “This is so good, oh my god,” he says as he finishes chewing. “Can you come cook for us every morning?”

“I wish I could, Byers, I wish I could,” she says, and her voice is only half joking. She takes a forkful of her own egg and smiles around it. Oh yeah, she’s good.

“What’s that I hear? Something cooking without the smell of burning?”

She turns to see Joyce leaning against the doorframe, still in her dressing gown. She produces a cigarette from her pocket and pinches it between her lips to light it, before sighing. “Robin, how’d you feel about moving in as our own private chef?”

Robin flushes. “You haven’t tried it yet,” she points out, and obligingly Joyce moves forward and takes a plate. As she takes a bite Robin has to look down at the floor and contain a sudden lump in her throat, because why the fuck is this all so nice? Why the fuck is the sunlight so golden, the smiles on each of their faces so genuine? Families aren’t happy. Families are bitter and nagging and silent. Families don’t tease each other about burnt food.

Her mom, the one and only time she burnt dinner, had smashed a plate on the floor in anger before spending the evening sobbing in her room, refusing to let Robin touch her. It had not been a laughing matter - not even close.

Robin can’t remember the last time she laughed with her mom.

And what’s more, Joyce isn’t treating her awkwardly, like she’s made of glass after last night. After her nightmare. Joyce’s attitude hasn’t changed a bit. Mary Buckley hates seeing Robin cry, and after a bit of cursory comfort she becomes cold for the rest of the day. But Joyce isn’t like that.

And Joyce likes her eggs. “Holy shit,” she says softly. “You’re gonna have to teach Jonathan how to make these, they’re amazing.”

Robin flushes again, harder. “Oh, sure, there’s a knack to them. It’s not too hard when you know how.”

Joyce quirks an eyebrow. “Don’t underestimate the Byers inability to cook. Pretty sure it’s genetic.”

Robin shrugs, turns back to the pan and gets out another egg. “I don’t know, I think anyone can learn. Also, I hope you don’t mind me using all these eggs.”

“No, go ahead. Eggs are pretty much the cheapest thing you can buy.” She moves to the counter, leans against it as she watches Robin cook. “Hey, who’s this playing on the radio?”

“The B-52’s,” Robin and Jonathan say together, then look at each other and laugh.

“That’s not creepy at all,” Will says, as he enters the kitchen. He’s wearing a t shirt with a colorful logo on it that Robin immediately recognises.

“Hey, Star Trek?” she asks, pointing it out.

He looks a little taken aback. “Uh, yeah, you- you like Star Trek?”

“Uh huh.” She can tell he still doesn’t believe her. “Live long and prosper, right? My favorite’s Uhura.”

He shakes his head. “Spock all the way. I can’t believe you like Star Trek. That’s so cool.”

She shrugs, and smiles at the amazement radiating from Jonathan beside her. “I’m a girl of hidden depths.”

Joyce’s smile has lost a little color. “Hey, Will, is that the t shirt Bob got you?” she says quietly.

He nods. “If you want I can change-”

She shakes her head. “No, of course not, don’t be silly.” It sounds a little like it’s more directed at herself than her son, and Robin frowns. Bob’s name has been mentioned a lot, thrown around, and she recalls something about him making some sort of sacrifice play - saving Joyce, and Will, and Mike, and the Chief. But again, Robin’s new to all this. She doesn’t know how deep any of these losses run.

“Eggs?” she offers Will, as an attempt to lighten the mood.

He nods. “Sure, if you’re making.”

She turns back to the stove and absently begins to hum along to the next song that comes on. “We’re only making plans for Nigel,” she sings under her breath and looks around in surprise when Jonathan joins in, quietly too. He’s not got a great voice, admittedly, and his sense of key is hardly band-worthy, but the sudden warmth that shows on his expression tells her two things at once.

One: he doesn’t sing around just anyone. It means he’s comfortable around her, for some reason, just as Joyce seems comfortable to air her grief and Will seems comfortable to talk about Star Trek.

Two: he likes her. Not in that way - he’s clearly devoted to Nancy - but somehow he trusts her. Just like Steve trusts her, just like all those kids somehow trust her despite her being new to all this.

She guesses she’s just got one of those faces.

Chapter Text

Robin first realises that she’s different when she’s eleven years old.

She’s walking down the street with her mom in the middle of Chicago and a pair passes them on the sidewalk - two women, one with short hair and a men’s jacket. Her mom steers her away from them, casts a disgusted look at their feet that somehow conveys more disapproval than if she’d spat at them.

“Come along, Robin,” her mom says when she hesitates. “You don’t want to catch anything.”

Of course these are the days before the AIDs crisis really makes people panic, but there’s still the vague fear of disease. Still the feeling that the ‘lifestyle’ is catching.

And Robin doesn’t know why, but it makes her feel nauseous. Makes her stomach twist, when she sees the expression on her mom’s face. She mistakes it for kindred disgust when in fact it’s deeper and scarier.

The second time is when she’s watching Tammy Thompson, all languid and lazy on the first day of school. She’s long-haired, brunette, and has got such heated eyes that Robin wants to melt in them. But Tammy never looks at her. Tammy’s sweep of hair is turned to golden flame by the glint of the sunlight and still she stares at Steve, Steve whom she’s far too good for. Steve who leaves crumbs in his wake and whose famous hair is little more than greasy-

Tammy doesn’t look at Robin once.

And the pain in Robin’s gut doesn’t cease until she realises what it is. Until she realises that - well - she’s fallen in love. (Or as close to love as fourteen-year-olds get.) She realises she’s a carrier, a patient zero of the disease her mom’s so scared of. She realises she’s different.

And she hates it. God, she hates it. She wants to be like all the rest- wants it to be Steve, not Tammy, whom she’s lusting after. Wants not to have to hide her very soul from her mom - or at least, it feels like her soul, at the time. Feels like the name ‘Tammy Thompson’ is engraved on her very heart.

Later, she realises, it was a shallow and foolish crush. But still. In those formative years when she went from band kid to dyke Tammy Thompson meant the world.

Shorthand, almost. She’s come out to two people in her life - Steve, of course, and her old friend Judy. Judy Penhurst, who’s poorer than Robin, shorter than Robin, and basically followed Robin around in everything she did. She told Judy because she had to tell someone, at the tender age of fifteen, and if it wasn’t Tammy and it wasn’t her mom Judy was the next best thing.

Tammy was shorthand then. She told the Tammy story and waited for the penny to drop, and nearly cried when it did because Judy didn’t want to see her anymore. Judy didn’t want to be friends with the dyke on Cherry Road. Judy was sick of band practice anyway, and was that the only reason Robin played soccer? So she could spy on all the girls in the changing room?

Judy didn’t tell anyone, at least. She moved away a few months later - completely unrelated, but somehow it still stung. Abandoned for the one thing Robin can’t possibly help.

Judy, and Steve. Robin cringed when she told him, sure he’d leave her too. Sure he might even hit her, like she’d seen the quarterback do to a boy he caught staring too long. But he didn’t. He just said a soft ‘oh’, like it was normal. Like Larry Speakes hadn’t been on TV the year before saying the president didn’t give a shit about AIDs, like Barry Smith hadn’t been beaten up last month because he smiled at a man and spoke with a lisp.

Robin loves Steve for it, just a little bit. Loves that he questions her taste (even though he’s wrong - Tammy is a fucking goddess, thank you very much) and brings out a smile, even a laugh in her. Loves that he takes her rejection humbly, on the chin. An easy expression.

She lets him drive her to work, her first day at the record store the following week. (She got the job easy - a winning smile and a comment on the Joy Division playing on the radio was all it took.) He grins at her across the gearbox and shoots off so fast she barely has time to buckle her seatbelt. “So. First day, new job, no me? How does it feel?”

“Tragic,” she says, and rolls her eyes. “Relax, dingus, I promise to miss you a bit.”

“I’ll take that. I’m sure it beats scooping ice cream all day.”

“And cleaning up sick in the toilets,” she adds, face twisting in revulsion at the memory. God, that was a gross day. These were different toilets to The Toilets, the ones where she’d bared her very soul, but she’d still nearly cried in horror when Steve slid over the floor.

“And cleaning up sick in the toilets,” Steve repeats. “Hey, if you find any Kim Wilde, shoot it this way, okay?”

“Kim Wilde, Steve? Oh my god. Pretty sure they’d fire me if I even touched a Kim Wilde record.”

“Oh, come on. And it’s a music store, right? That’s what it does. Sell music.”

“It’s not just a music store. It’s a good music store.”

“You and Jonathan,” he mutters, as they turn onto previously-deserted downtown Main Street. It’s beginning to flood with life again, now that the Mall is closed. Shops reopening, sale signs coming down. “One of a kind, I swear. Sure you weren’t separated at birth?”

“Huh, I wish,” Robin says. It’s only half a joke. “When are you gonna get another job?”

“Dunno,” he replies glumly. “Hopefully my dad won’t find something as demeaning as ice cream this time. You know, for someone who’s never here he somehow manages to know all the shitty little details about this town.”

“Not all of them,” she reminds him, and somehow they manage to share a grin. Yeah, not all of them. She’s pretty sure John Harrington doesn’t know shit about Russians or gates or girls with psychic powers.

“And meanwhile, Buckley, we need to find you a girl who’s not Tammy Thompson.”

It hits her like whiplash and the smile slowly drops. Spoken so casually - damn, she’s never even thought about it casually. Steve really just… doesn’t give a shit, does he? He really doesn’t care. She has to resist the urge to look around furtively, to check the backseat for eavesdroppers, before she lets her smile tentatively grow again. “What makes you so qualified? Last I checked you still sucked.”

He shrugs. “I make a pretty good wingman.”

“Oh my god, no you do not.”

“Uh, yeah, I do. Dustin’s not-so-imaginary girlfriend?” He looks over at her and indicates himself. “All me, baby. All me.”

“Okay, never call me baby again and maybe I’ll consider letting you help me out.”

“Done,” he says, sitting back with a smirk. Her own is matching, but private. Because sure, she’ll let him help her out, but where he’s gonna find another girl that likes girls in Hawkins, buttfuck-nowhere, Indiana? Nowhere, is the answer. So she can sit back and watch him scrambling for girls for both himself and her and probably failing hideously in the process - which should be hilarious.

Still, she thinks as she walks into the store and clips her nametag to her shirt, it’s a nice gesture.

The store is relatively quiet - though not in the literal sense, as the radio is cranked up loud enough that Robin can barely hear herself think - and she spends her time flicking through records, and trying not to drool over the poster of Debbie Harry plastered to the wall. (Say what you want about her music, she’s fucking gorgeous.)

At about eleven, two hours into her shift and an hour before she’s allowed to break for lunch, the bell rings and she looks up to see Will wandering the stacks. “Hey,” she says, though she doesn’t go over. He’s got a sort of innate wariness to him, like Jonathan only mellower. Scared, rather than hostile. She doesn’t want to frighten him off.

To her surprise he comes up to the counter. She takes her feet off it a little sheepishly and stands up. “How can I help?”

“I- um, it’s Jonathan’s birthday. This Friday. And I wanna make him a mixtape or something, like he’s always doing for me, but I don’t know-” He sighs. “I wanna make it personal, not just parrot back all the stuff he’s shown me. So I was hoping- maybe- you could help?”

She stands a little straighter. “Uh, sure. What kind of mood were you thinking?”

“Something happy? Something my mom won’t make him turn off if he plays it in the kitchen.” Will is smiling, and Robin smiles too.

“No Bauhaus, then.”

He looks horrified. “Jonathan likes Bauhaus?”

“Jury’s out on that one. If you want upbeat you’re gonna wanna go for some New Order, The The, maybe The Smiths and The Cure but you gotta be selective. We’ve actually got a load of records you could use to record from, if you want.”

Will’s eyes are wide. “Wow, thanks.” She points to the post-punk section, which in fact takes up most of the store, and he heads over to it. Comes back with a stack of records so large he struggles to walk under the weight of them. She takes some of them and flicks through them, nodding approvingly.

“Speaking in Tongues? Nice. You gotta put Naive Melody on the mixtape, if you’re looking for happy songs. God, it’s such a good song.” Then she comes to The Clash and has to frown. “If you’re going for upbeat-”

He interrupts her. Turns out the kid really, really likes The Clash. “I have a song in mind.” He’s got a secret little smile. “Trust me.”

Huh. Will seems pretty cool, in actual fact. Cooler than his friends. She’s pretty sure Dustin’s never heard of the Talking Heads. And as for gangly Mike or god forbid Erica-

Yeah, Will’s pretty cool.

She spends her afternoon helping him compile the songs, a painstaking process of stopping and starting and carefully watching the spool of tape. She takes great pleasure in peeling the plastic off the Talking Heads’ latest record, released only a month before, even as Will hesitates.

“Are you sure you’re allowed to do that?” he asks, as she lovingly settles it on the turntable and drops the needle. “Open new records, I mean?”

She shrugs. “Sure, I work here. Pretty sure mixtape making is one of our services, anyway. That, and I think we’re contractually obligated to laugh at anyone who comes in looking for Kenny Rogers.”

There’s an unexpected flash of something on his face - maybe pain. “That- um, that was a joke me and Jonathan had. It was like - why be Kenny Rogers when you can be Bowie, you know?” She nods. She does know. “But it turns out Bob liked Kenny Rogers, and it was funny at the time, but...”

She frowns. “Bob was your mom’s boyfriend?” She hasn’t been told this, not in so many words, but she’s guessed it.

He nods. “Yeah. Jonathan didn’t really like him. Didn’t trust him, I think. But- I don’t know. He was nice. Mom was happy. And then… well…” He sighs. “She was thinking of moving to Maine with him. With us. A fresh start, after everything that happened.”

Huh. And Robin thinks her family has problems? Even one conversation with one Byers is enough to put them in perspective. She’s lucky, she guesses. Hasn’t gone through bereavement and abandonment and literal possession. Hasn’t lost anyone - except Judy, and Judy doesn’t count.

“I’m sorry,” she offers, and it’s sincere. He smiles at her, a small smile that brightens the room.

“It’s okay. Hey, do you have any Pet Shop Boys? I know they’re niche, so I’m always looking…”

“Hang on,” she says, a little startled (but not surprised) by the sudden change of subject. She stands up and goes to the front of the store, and returns with the record in hand. “This is all we’ve got. Their new single- it’s not very popular-”

He grabs it out of her hands and stares at it a little gleefully. “How much is it?”

“I thought you didn’t have a record player-”

“Mike does. He lets me come over and use it whenever.”

She shrugs, again. She seems to find herself doing that a lot, nonplussed at what these kids get up to. She tells him the price and he hands over the money immediately, clutching the record to his chest like it’s a lifeline. Privately, she’s frowning. Her gaydar isn’t great (especially around girls) but she can tell something’s up. The Pet Shop Boys are new on the scene but there are already rumors flying and it’s a certain kind of man - or boy - who’s most notable for liking them.

She helps him finish his mixtape and as he’s leaving, the grateful grin never vanishing from his face, he throws the invite casually over his shoulder- “Do you wanna come? On Friday? We’re just having dinner, but Mom wants the house busy and I’m sure Jonathan would love you to be there.”

“Oh, wow, thanks,” she says. And hesitates. “What about Steve?”

“Steve too. It’ll be you, me, Jonathan, Mom, Hopper, El, Nancy, and Steve. If you two come.”

“Sure,” she says. The decision solidifies. “Yeah, I’ll be there.”

It’s not like she’s got anything better to do on Friday night.

Chapter Text

Friday night comes round quicker than she expects. Her week is dull, her job more so, and she spends most of it compiling her own mixtapes. All for herself, of course, because who else is she gonna make one for? Steve? No, he’s a lost cause when it comes to music. Her mom despises anything post ‘69 and her dad doesn’t listen to music at all. So she just adds song after song to her own tapes, watching the spool run out. The Cure, The Smiths, XTC. Plays it loud enough she can’t even hear the store’s bell when it rings.

She learns from Steve on Thursday morning two things: the first being that he can’t come to dinner the following day, because his dad’s in town for once and is taking him to the nicest restaurant in Hawkins. No isn’t an acceptable answer, apparently. That’s never stopped Robin, but Robin’s dad isn’t Steve’s dad. Robin’s dad’s a nobody, and it shows in his easily-cowed demeanor. Steve’s dad is far from a nobody.

The second thing is that Jonathan now works at the bookstore opposite.

So on Friday morning, the day of his birthday, she drops by with a crappy card and an honest smile. Waves away a customer from his till because it’s his birthday, for fuck’s sake. He can’t do anything but slack on his birthday.

“I know it’s a shitty card,” she says as he opens it. “It was the only one they had left.” It’s got Superman on the front, along with a very large Happy 8th Birthday! to the front of which she’d added a 1. “But, you know, happy birthday! Eighteen, legal adult, all that crap.”

“Thank you,” he says. He’s looking at her from under his bangs shyly, and his gratitude is earnest. “I heard you’re coming tonight?”

“Yeah, uh, is that okay? I know we’ve really only just met, but-”

“It’s fine, it’s cool actually. Should be fun.” He gives what she’s begun to realise is his trademark lopsided grin. “I managed to convince Mom to let someone else cook. Nancy’s doing most of it, I think.”

She’s not quite at the stage yet where she can make fun of Joyce, even in jest, so she just smiles. “Does she need any help? I can always come early. My shift finishes at, like, four, and my boss will never notice if I shut up shop a bit early.”

She realises she’s probably overstepping. He might not even want her there, might just have felt obligated to invite her - but his face brightens. “I mean, don’t get fired, but we’d love it if you came early. I think Nance is a bit overwhelmed to be cooking for eight people all on her own.”

“Seven,” she corrects, almost without thinking. He frowns. “Steve can’t come.”

“Oh, yeah, he called Nancy and told her. I forgot.”

Robin studies him. “Is it… you know, weird? With him and Nancy?”

For the first time he looks uncomfortable. “I mean… no? Not really. I don’t really… involve myself in it. I trust her- I trust both of them, really.”

She nods. She knows Steve has lingering feelings - will probably always have feelings - but has no intention of ‘stealing’ Nancy back. He knows full well it’s time to move on. He’d never try anything. He’s a gentleman, for all her teasing. An actually decent guy, and she hasn’t met too many of them. Jonathan seems to be another such guy.

“So, books, huh?” It’s an awkward segue, but she’s dug herself into a hole with the Nancy-Steve thing. She should know to steer clear of such deep topics, when this is a guy she’s known for only a week.

He nods. “Yeah, I mean I’m not the most well-read person on the planet, but it’s a job. Not like we could go back to Hawkins Post.”

His smile is maybe not as mirthful as it could be. She gets it, even though she’s not quite in the same boat. Because her financial straits are uneasy, rather than dire. She can afford to crow in the wake of a shitty job ending - while (from what she’s seen and heard) Jonathan really can’t.

“Favorite writer?”

“Vonnegut,” he answers, without a moment’s hesitation.

She nods in approval. “Damn, Byers, you got good taste in everything.” (Including girls, she thinks to herself - cooking with Nancy Wheeler sounds like a dream.)

He shrugs, looking vaguely embarrassed. Then he freezes up and looks down at the till like he’s trying to appear busy. “Shit, you have to go.”

She glances around and sees a tall man with glasses whom she assumes is his boss. Fair enough, though she feels a bit disappointed. She’d happily have blown off her shift to go get milkshakes or something - but Jonathan has to work. She knows that. She probably has to too. “See you later,” she whispers and hurries out of the store. The boss gives her a suspicious look and she responds with an innocent smile.

Later she has Siouxsie’s The Passenger blaring in her ears as she cycles to the Byers’, a smile stealing onto her face despite how deranged it probably looks. “And everything looks good tonight,” she sings under her breath as she pulls up and swings off the saddle, tugging her headphones down to her neck just as Joyce opens the door.

“Hey,” she says. “Jonathan phoned, said you’d be coming early. I’m all but banned from the kitchen so I’m sure Nancy would love the help.”

Robin gives her that same winning smile. “Oh, that’s a bit unfair, surely? You’re not that bad.”

Joyce raises her eyebrows so high they disappeared behind her bangs. “You know you’re an angel, Robin, but you don’t have to lie.”

They walk down to the kitchen together, where Nancy is rolling out pastry on the countertop, hands dusted in flour. “Hey,” she says with a smile as they walk in. “I’m just making the tart for dessert.”

“And you’re sure I can’t help?” Joyce asks. She has a way of hovering, almost fretful, that tells Robin she’s not used to having nothing to do.

“We’re sure,” Nancy says. Her eyes meet Robin’s with a sort of knowing look. “It’s Jonathan’s birthday but we want to treat all of you - that means you can sit back and relax.”

Joyce doesn’t look convinced but she sits down at the table nonetheless, taking out a packet of cigarettes and lighting one. Robin moves closer to Nancy. “What kind of tart are you making?”

“Almond and cherry,” she says. “Jonathan’s favorite. Do you think you could de-stone the cherries?”

Robin nods. Sure, she can do that. She finds a knife and sets to slicing them while Nancy pours beans into the pastry case to blind bake. “So you like cooking?”

“Yep,” she says. “I used to cook with my mom all the time when I was small, only we’re not as close anymore. She still cooks for us, though. I like to make the desserts.”

“Sounds fun,” Robin replies. It’s genuine. She’s never cooked with her mom. She’s learnt her own skills by trial-and-error, by reading her mom’s precious cookbooks over and over.

“Karen does make a good casserole,” Joyce muses from the table.

“Oh yeah, she’s famous for them. I can never get it quite right.” Nancy slides the pastry into the stove and wipes her hands on her apron.

“I take it no casserole tonight, then?”

She shakes her head with a smile. “No. Chicken. It’s already in the oven. Do you think you could chop some vegetables, though?”

“Sure,” Robin says, though she’s not quite sure how Joyce could screw up chopping vegetables. Still, she’s here to help, so help she will. “Is Jonathan still at work?”

Nancy nods. She’s opening her mouth to say something else when there’s a knock on the door and Joyce leaves to open it - and Robin recognises the Chief’s distinct deep voice.

She takes the opportunity to lean closer to Nancy. “What actually happened? You know, with the Chief? Everyone was sure he was dead and then he just wasn’t.”

“Well, you know Mrs Byers closed the gate. Hopper was close enough to it she thought he’d get hit by the blast, but apparently he managed to take cover. He was hiding down there long enough that the soldiers missed him on their first sweep, and then he came back here.”

It sounds miraculous, almost. Robin can’t imagine how different the mood would be if he hadn’t survived. Black clothes, a funeral wake instead of a birthday dinner. Depressing canapes instead of cherry tart.

“And him and Mrs Byers? Is that…?”

Nancy gives a secret, mysterious grin. “Who knows. They’ve been dancing round the edge of something for a while, I think. Steve wanted to start a betting pool on when they’d get together but Jonathan veto’ed it. Said it was gross, because she’s his mom.”

“They’re not together?” Robin quirks an eyebrow. They certainly look like they’re together, whenever they’re in the same room. They gravitate together with the sort of magnetism that has always been absent from her own parents.

Nancy shakes her head. “I know. It surprised me too. Jonathan’s a bit wary, though.”

She doesn’t say anything else, but Robin can sense a sort of tension there. Can sense some lingering issues under the surface. Daddy issues much worse than her own.

Hopper and Joyce come into the kitchen, tailed by El, and the two girls fall silent in such a way that Joyce frowns.

“What are you two conspiring about?”

“Nothing, Mrs Byers,” they both manage to say in perfect synchronicity. Robin’s heart does a little dance and she has to inwardly scold herself for it. No. Stop. Nancy - off limits. It shouldn’t be too hard to remember.

“Call me Joyce, please. I keep telling people but no one seems to listen,” Joyce says. Her voice is distracted, not unkind.

“I don’t know why you kept the asshole’s name in the first place,” Hopper grumbles. She shoots him a look and he falls silent, eyes still narrowed.

“Now, help Robin with the vegetables. She’s a guest.”

“So am I,” he says, but he comes over anyway and starts chopping carrots next to her. El perches on the counter a little way away from them, and swipes a cherry from the bowl. “Hey,” he chides.

“Chef’s privilege,” she says. It’s clear it’s something she’s heard on tv, or heard Hopper saying without the proper context. And indeed he sighs.

“You have to actually be the chef to have chef’s privilege, kid,” he says.

“Oh.” She looks a little despondent. Robin is fascinated - because from what she’s heard this girl grew up so completely isolated from normal life, from culture and other children and childhood in general, and yet looks and sounds for the most part normal. Is all but normal, now that her powers seem to be gone. But every so often - though this is her first interaction with the girl, really, so she doesn’t know - El must slip, and make some sort of mistake that reveals her troubled past to the world. How she’s gonna go to school, Robin doesn’t know. Rudimentary history, geography, math - it must all be alien to her.

Joyce swats Hopper on the arm. “Leave her alone.” He gives her the sort of look that Robin feels incredibly awkward even witnessing - some sort of smitten glance so ridiculously intimate even Joyce flushes. So much for the big bad police chief, Robin thinks as she turns away.

“So where’s Will?” she asks the room in general.

Joyce tears her eyes away from Hopper. “Oh, putting the finishing touches on his gift for Jonathan, apparently. I don’t know what it is. He said it’s a secret.”

Huh. So Robin is one of the privileged few. She’s looking forward to seeing what Jonathan thinks, in truth. She’s fucking proud of her mixtape skills.

Jonathan arrives about half an hour later, drooping a little with tiredness but brightening when the assembled guests greet him with an off-key rendition of Happy Birthday. Nancy gives him some complicated camera part that looks expensive, while Joyce presses a short stack of books into his hands. Sorry it’s not much, she whispers in his ear as she hugs him, voice a little teary, and Robin pretends she doesn’t hear it. It’s not meant for her to know.

Then it’s Will’s turn. Jonathan stares at the little cassette, disconcertingly silent and still, and are those tears in his eyes? Then he tugs Will into a long, tight hug, and over his shoulder Robin sees that Will has created some beautiful, intricate drawing as the cover. “You did all this by yourself?” Jonathan says, when he’s pulled back.

Will shakes his head. “Robin helped.” And she finds herself shy, suddenly, when they all turn to look at her.

“Superior music taste, remember?” she quips. Jonathan’s grinning.

“I still snuck The Clash in, though. All the good stuff.” Will’s smile is matching. He gets it playing and Robin listens in satisfaction to her good work - The Smiths leading nicely into Echo & the Bunnymen, New Order, then a song by The Clash that she finds herself nodding along to despite herself. Yeah, okay, it’s not that bad. Will looks victorious at her begrudging grin.

Hopper scoffs as he continues to cut the carrots, and El looks like she’d rather be listening to Cyndi Lauper, but Joyce and Nancy seem to be enjoying it. And when Bowie’s Heroes comes on even the Chief hums along under his breath.

Robin had been a little worried, when she learned Steve wasn’t coming. All these new people she’s only known for a week. But right here- right now- she feels more at home than ever.

Chapter Text

Robin has decided she rather likes the Chief.

He’s tall and commanding and abrasive, all traits she’s learnt to hate in the past (out of both experience and a general distaste for male authority) but something about him is warm. It’s the way he softens whenever he looks at Joyce, or El, or even Will. The way there’s no question who’s boss - and it’s not him. Joyce is undeniably the matriarch of their weird little family.

Dinner is loud, and full of laughter. Jonathan has a wickedly sharp wit, Robin discovers when he cares to use it, but so do Nancy and Hopper and Joyce so they’re all pretty evenly matched. Robin herself stays mostly silent, though she’d love to join in the banter. She’s just in awe, really.

(Down in that Russian lair, tied to a chair with Steve Harrington, she’d barely been able to imagine escaping - let alone that this would be her life after.)

When they’ve eaten somehow Jonathan’s mixtape has been replaced by The Beatles of all things and all of them (save Will and El, of course) are pleasantly tipsy. Jonathan is scowling at the music, Robin inclined to agree with him, when suddenly Hopper stands up and tugs Joyce up with him.

“No- Mom-” Will protests, clearly guessing what’s about to happen. Jonathan lets out a groan but El looks delighted, and, well, Robin can’t wait to see this. Distaste for The Beatles forgotten she looks on with a grin as Hopper leads Joyce into a dance. There are none of the cringy disco moves of the 70s or the more awkward shuffle of this decade - instead it’s very 60s, 50s even. More formal. And suddenly Robin can picture it, oh so clearly - Joyce and the Chief in high school, younger and wilder, dancing together at prom.

And then Nancy’s moving, grabbing Jonathan’s hand and forcibly dragging him out of his chair. “Come on, it’ll be fun,” she says with a grin.

“I’m not dancing to The Beatles,” he grumbles, but lets her guide him into it anyway.

“I was always more of a Stones girl,” Joyce says over Hopper’s shoulder. “But the early Beatles- their first album- it’s good, right?”

Robin nods, buoyed along by enthusiasm, while Jonathan shrugs.

“Can I use your camera?” El asks him, already standing with her body tilted towards his room, as if she knows he’ll say yes. And he does, his call of be careful with it! lost as she hurries down the corridor.

And then it’s just Robin and Will left at the table, which is scattered with empty plates and wine glasses. “You don’t wanna dance?” she asks him. He’s slumped low in his chair, eyes on the tablecloth rather than his family.

“Nope.”

“Shall we clear the table, then?” Because she wants to be useful. Doesn’t want to sit here like the queen of Sheba. She feels lucky enough to have been invited, and she’s not gonna push it.

“Sure,” he says, and he seems glad to be doing something, anything to avoid watching them dance. There’s something more than juvenile embarrassment in it, too. He’s distinctly uncomfortable.

When they’ve taken most of the plates and glasses into the kitchen, Robin leans against the counter and looks at him carefully. She’s never been a big sister, she doesn’t know how this works. Erica and Dustin were the closest she came and honestly? They didn’t really need her help. But something about Will is soft and vulnerable and Robin has her own suspicions that they might be more similar than everyone thinks.

“Are you okay?”

He makes a start on washing up, probably so he doesn’t have to look at her. “I’m fine.”

“You sure? I mean, I know you don’t really know me and all but if there’s anything you wanna talk about-”

“I said I’m fine,” he says, turning and staring at her with hostile eyes. She’s not surprised and she doesn’t blame him, really. Who is she? Some girl, some friend of Steve’s? One afternoon spent making mixtapes together is hardly enough to make him trust her.

“Okay,” she says simply. It was worth a try.

--

Two days later she visits them again, although she didn’t plan on it. Nancy phones her up - since when did she have her number? - and Robin has to pounce on the phone before her mother can say something unbearable. “Hey, Nancy,” she says and scowls at her mom as she mixes herself a martini.

“Hey, Robin. I’m at Jonathan’s and we were wondering if you wanted to come over? Joyce doesn’t want Will alone in the house so we can’t go out but we’re bored.”

Robin blinks in surprise. Nancy? Jonathan? Bored? And they’re asking for Robin? Clearly they haven’t spent enough time with her yet, because plenty of people have called her boring before. Either boring or weird as shit, which is the opposite extreme. But she finds herself nodding along. “Uh, sure. I’ll cycle over now.”

So she finds herself walking up to the Byers’ porch for the second time in three days, somehow nervous. Does she have this morning’s bacon in her teeth? Fuck, she probably has this morning’s bacon in her teeth-

“Robin! Hi!” Nancy says when she opens the door. Then she does something completely unexpected - she hugs her, quick and tight, and tugs her inside before Robin can so much as say hello. Jonathan’s on the sofa, reading, and Will is nowhere in sight. “I was thinking about baking something but we’ve run out of sugar.”

“Oh, I could have picked some up on the way.’

She shakes her head. “No, don’t worry. Besides, I think the Chief’s on a diet and he spends so much time here he’d end up eating whatever I made.” She sits down next to Jonathan and sighs melodramatically.

“What are you reading?” Robin asks him. She cranes her neck to get a glimpse of the cover.

“Invitation to a Beheading,” he says. “Nabokov.”

“Oh, I haven’t read that. Heard about it, though. It’s meant to be good.”

He nods. “It is.”

Nancy prods him in the side as his gaze flickers back to the pages. “We have a guest, remember?”

“I don’t mind,” Robin says. “Do you think your mom has left any cigarettes lying around that I can steal?”

Jonathan looks up in surprise. “Didn’t know you smoked.”

“I don’t - at least, not if my mom can help it. I like it occasionally, though.”

“There might be some in the kitchen,” he says, and she goes off to look. She returns triumphant with a half empty pack and a lighter, scuffed and scratched. She offers them to Jonathan and Nancy but both of them shake their heads.

“Pussies,” Robin says under her breath. Jonathan looks mildly offended while Nancy laughs, high and clear.

Robin gets one out and takes a drag, then coughs and splutters on the smoke. “Fuck, that’s disgusting! What the hell is your mom smoking here, jet fuel?”

Jonathan frowns, grabbing one and holding it to his nose. “Those aren’t mom’s.”

“Whose are they, then?”

He inspects the pack. They’re Camel no-filters, the branding large and obnoxious in bright orange. “I think they’re Hopper’s.”

“What?” Nancy says. She’s all but sitting on his lap.

“My mom- she only smokes filtered. She’s always complaining that Hopper’s are disgusting because they don’t have a filter.”

“I don’t blame her,” Robin says, taking another experimental drag and nearly coughing up a lung.

“But you know what that means?” Nancy says. She sits up, eyes alive with mischief.

“What does it mean?”

“Think about it,” Robin says, picking up on what Nancy is getting at. “He left his smokes here? Along with-“ she inspects the lighter, and finds a tiny engraved JRH on the base “-his very own lighter? It’s obvious what happened.”

“Is it?”

“They’re sleeping together.” Nancy’s smirking.

“Oh my god, no, why would you-“

“They’ve gotta be, right?” Robin finds that the sharp taste of the cigarette is growing on her. “I mean, have you seen them around each other?”

“Please, stop. I really do not wanna hear about my mom’s sex life. Or even that she has a sex life.”

“Why? Isn’t she allowed one? She’s smoking hot.”

Both Jonathan and Nancy stare at her a little harder than necessary. And yeah, maybe she shouldn’t have said that. But Joyce may be nearly forty but Robin can’t deny it, she’s an attractive woman. (Woman - the word nearly screams at her. She hopes they don’t realise it’s a little more than objective.)

“Yeah, but… but- she’s my mom,” Jonathan protests, when he’s finally found his voice.

“I don’t know, she’s single, she’s not all that old, she deserves some happiness, don’t you think?” Nancy looks at him.

“But with Hopper?”

“If I recall correctly you didn’t like Bob all that much either.”

Jonathan shifts uncomfortably. The sofa creaks underneath him. “Bob- that was-“ He falls silent a little helplessly.

“Hopper’s not like Lonnie,” Nancy whispers. “Your mom’s learnt her lesson on that score.”

Robin looks away at the floor. She’s sure she’s not meant to witness this, to hear it. Sure Jonathan’s family issues are his own, and not meant for her ears. But Jonathan’s not the trusting type, she’s noticed that. And Nancy’s the type of girlfriend who understands, who complies wholeheartedly. So if they’re talking about it in front of her, it means they don’t mind. It means she’s allowed to know.

Jonathan sighs. “I just want her to be okay, you know? I don’t want her to get hurt.”

“Look, I don’t know if it helps, but from what I’ve seen? Your mom- she’s fucking amazing.” Robin stubs out the cigarette in the handily placed ashtray on the table. “Like… my mom can barely drive. And yours? She’s out here saving all our lives- raising you and Will on her own on minimum wage-“

Jonathan flushes. “Yeah. Yeah, she’s pretty special. She always shielded us from the worst of it- the worst of Lonnie.”

He falls silent abruptly, like he said more than he meant to. But Nancy smoothes the silence over. “Yeah, I love your mom. I mean, didn’t you say she always knows about me staying over but just… doesn’t give a shit?”

He lets out a surprised laugh. “Huh, yeah, she does. Literally, she wiped lipstick off my cheek the other day and all she said was ‘have a good day at work’.”

“Sounds nice,” Robin says. Inwardly she knows that her life will never, ever, ever be like that. Knows that even if she was straight her mother would still find excuses to kick her boyfriend out - and because she’s gay, a lesbian, a dyke, it’s a hundred thousand times harder. Even Joyce might find that hard to accept, she thinks with a pang. What if Joyce knew? Would she bar Robin from the house? (No, she thinks, but she can’t be sure.)

“It is nice,” Nancy says. “Hey, where’s Will? I thought he wanted to watch that Stars Trek rerun when it came on at three.”

“Star Trek,” Robin corrects without even thinking about it. Yeah, she’s a nerd, so what? “I can get him, if you want.”

They nod and she goes down the corridor and knocks cautiously, peering her head around the door. Will is sprawled on his stomach on his bed, coloring in a drawing with furious strokes of a red crayon. When he spots her he hurries to fold it away, eyes shy and wary. “Hey.”

“Hey. Star Trek’s about to start, if you wanna come watch it? I know Jonathan and Nancy aren’t big fans but I’m sure we can make them enjoy it somehow.”

He looks marginally happier and scrambles to his feet. “Do you know when Mom’s gonna be home?”

She shakes her head. “Sorry. Jonathan might know. She’s at work, right?”

He nods a little despondently. “She has to work all the time. It sucks, we never get to see her except at like eleven pm or six in the morning.”

Robin shrugs. (What she wouldn’t give for her mom to work such long hours.) As they exit his room Will sniffs and looks at her suspiciously. “Why do you smell like Hopper does?”

“Um- I think I had one of his cigarettes on accident. They were just lying around.”

“Oh, yeah, he’s always here. He’s gonna be our new dad.”

Robin splutters, worse than she did on the Chief’s gross cigarettes. “Really?” She halts, so that they remain out of Jonathan’s earshot.

“Yeah.” He says it like there’s not even a question. “They went on a date to Enzo’s and everything. El told me.”

That doesn’t guarantee anything, Robin thinks, but she knows better than to argue with the iron-clad judgement of a fourteen year old who is somehow simultaneously a little bit immature and yet also far too wise.

“Enzo’s, huh?” she says instead. “That’s fancy. Didn’t know the Chief liked that kind of place.”

“He doesn’t, and neither does Mom, but that’s what makes it special, I guess.” He shrugs. He doesn’t get it and neither does she, really, but she kinda likes the idea. It’s romantic, in a way. Both of them striving beyond what they’re comfortable with and then laughing together at the outcome.

“Okay,” Robin says. Then they go down the corridor and all four of them watch Star Trek together on the couch. Nancy is curled into Jonathan’s side, clutching a steaming mug of tea, while Robin smirks and makes snide comments when Captain Kirk’s shirt is very deliberately ripped to expose his chest. Will flushes, Jonathan rolls his eyes, and Nancy sits up a little.

Towards the end Joyce arrives home, blinking in surprise when she opens the door to see all four of them on the couch together. “Hey, guys.” She’s drooping with exhaustion, ears bleary, face shadowed and tired, but she still finds the energy for a weary smile.

“Tough day?” Jonathan asks.

“God, you have no idea. What is it with Hawkins and treating retail workers like garbage?” She shrugs off her smock, drops her satchel by the door.

“At least it’s your last week there.”

“I don’t know. I gotta find another job, Jonathan.” She sighs. “But you’re right, it can’t be worse than Melvald’s. Yesterday I had to clean up some man’s vomit in aisle four.”

Robin finds herself raising her eyebrows. “That’s nothing on Scoops. We had vomit, like, every day. Pretty sure one guy was lactose intolerant yet every day he came in for more and more ice cream. Ugh.”

Joyce wrinkles her nose. “Okay, so we can agree that customer service is pretty shit.”

“Shhh,” Will says, glaring at them. Star Trek is still playing in the background. Joyce smiles and mimes zipping her lips, coming to slump on the couch between Jonathan and Robin.

Outside twilight draws in but Robin doesn’t even notice - because the curtains are drawn and the adventures of Kirk and Spock are far enough removed from her reality that she can forget it, for a while. Maybe that’s why Will likes it so much. Hawkins disappears and there’s only the Enterprise, beckoning them all to new horizons.

Chapter Text

One evening a few days later her mom tries some sort of diplomatic reconciliation policy, so polite it’s like she’s welcoming a foreign leader. They’re clearing up dinner, a dinner that was eaten mostly in silence, and she leans over the counter to look at Robin with a fake plastic smile.

“How’s work going, honey?”

Robin narrows her eyes. “Fine,” she says as she wipes a plate with the dishcloth. “Why?”

“Aren’t I allowed to ask after my daughter’s wellbeing?” She puts on that tone, the put-out pout, the simpering eyes that say my life is so unfair.

“I guess.”

“And what about that Steve? How are things with him?”

“... Fine?” Robin frowns. “Are you suggesting…? Steve and I- we aren’t together.”

Her mom’s face droops. “Oh. But he seems like such a nice boy.”

“Yeah, he is, but he’s not my boyfriend.” She has to resist the urge to spill it out right there - I’m never gonna have a boyfriend. I’m a dyke. I like girls. It would only spell more and more trouble.

“Well, anyway. Your father’s coming home this weekend and I was thinking- well. We could do something? Just the two of us? Before he gets back?”

Huh. She gets what’s going on here. Her mom wants Robin to be on her side, to form some sort of sick, twisted alliance against her dad. Maybe they’re divorcing - maybe that’s what this means. Honestly? Robin doesn’t really care.

“Sure,” she says halfheartedly, because she’s not quite at the stage where she can be cruel to her mom.

“Great.” Mary Buckley doesn’t look all that enthusiastic either. “Maybe we could catch a movie.”

“Sure,” she says again. She really doesn’t give a shit.

She spends the evening on the phone to Steve, bitching about how much she hates her godawful fucking mother. “She’s a nightmare, Steve. A literal nightmare. I don’t get how the fuck I’m supposed to put up with this-“

“Stay calm, okay? You gotta stay calm otherwise they get more annoying. Trust me, I know.”

“Ugh. And the worst thing is she thinks we’re dating? Like… us? Dating?”

Steve scoffs. “No, she doesn’t.”

“Yeah, she does. It’s really weird. She said you’re ‘such a nice boy’.” She can hear him preening at that. “Hey, stop, that’s not a good thing.”

“What can I say? I’m charming.”

“Ugh.” She rolls her eyes, twists the phone cord around her finger. All of a sudden she feels like the romantic heroine of some shitty teen movie, and she has to laugh. Her- and Steve- god no.

She passes Jonathan on her way to work that morning, walking down the street with Will. She waves at them from her bike and nearly collides with some asshole in a van, but when she rights herself they’re still smiling. She flushes a little as they walk on, because that wasn’t exactly ‘cool’. But they don’t seem to care.

She’s feeling unusually upbeat this morning so when she opens up the store she puts a Queen record on the record player only a little sheepishly. She’s allowed her guilty pleasures, right? She hums along to Killer Queen under her breath as she tidies the shelves.

About half an hour into her shift the bell rings for the first time and when she turns to see who it is- well. She has to take a moment to stop and stare. It’s a girl, and she’s gorgeous. She’s fucking gorgeous- fuck-

“Hey,” the girl says, seemingly oblivious to Robin’s internal crisis. She’s a few inches shorter than Robin, with long black hair pulled up out of her face. And she’s cool, too - her leather biker jacket is at least two sizes too big and decorated with patches from The Rolling Stones, Bowie, Led Zeppelin. God she’s cool. She brushes a stray strand of hair away from her face and smiles. She’s wearing a fuckton of eyeliner, too. “Queen, huh?”

Robin flushes. “Uh, yeah. I dunno, I was just in a Queen mood.”

Amazingly, cruelly, the girl starts to dance along to it a little, face breaking out in an even bigger smile. “Crazy little thing called love,” she hums, and laughs. “I love some Queen. I’m Sherry.”

“Robin,” Robin says, and tries not to die inside. “Can I, you know, help you find anything?”

Sherry shakes her head. “Nah, I was just looking. Though actually, since I’m here, do you have any Falco? He’s Austrian.”

“Falco?” Robin searches her memory a little more frantically than necessary. Some stupid part of her is desperate to please. “We might? Sorry, I’m pretty new here.”

“Nah, that’s okay.” Sherry looks around the store, her ponytail bobbing at the back of her head. “Hey, Debbie Harry? God, she’s so cool.”

She’s pointing at the poster above the counter and Robin nods eagerly. “Yeah, I really love her.”

“Well, I’m new in town - I’m not gonna be here very long, actually. So I was wondering, you know, where’s the best place to get a burger?”

“Oh, that’s gonna be Benny’s. I mean, Benny’s not around anymore-” and now she knows why, thanks to Dustin and Steve “-but his sister took it over and it’s just as good.”

“Sounds good,” Sherry says, looking at her through lowered lashes. Is she biting her lip? It’s suddenly too hot in the store, the air too close. Is she flirting? No. But is she? Could she be? “Well, I guess I’ll see you around,” she says after the moment of silence stretches too long. She begins to turn towards the door with a vague air of disappointment.

“Wait-” Robin blurts out a little desperately. “We could go together, if you want. My shift ends at twelve anyway, so I could meet you there for lunch?” She’s lying, her shift doesn’t end at twelve, it ends at three, but she’s damned if she’s letting this girl slip through her fingers.

Sherry’s face brightens with a smile. “Twelve at Benny’s. See you there.”

She leaves the store not having bought anything but Robin is flushing furiously for the rest of her shift. It’s probably just friendly- all in her head- but still. Sherry’s smile is so goddamn warm.

She blows off her shift at ten to twelve and cycles over to Benny’s so fast her legs are burning when she arrives, but she makes it only one minute late. Sherry’s already at a booth, drumming her hands on the sticky lacquered table. She has nice hands, Robin thinks. Long slender fingers, decorated with a ring or two. Black nail varnish, slightly chipped.

“Hey,” she says, and grins.

They each order a burger and fries and the conversation is somehow ridiculously easy. Sherry’s from Chicago, in town with her mom to visit her cousins. Chicago is cool, apparently. She describes it as a place ‘where you can be whoever you want’ and Robin tries - really, she tries - not to take it as too much of a hint. But come on, she’s only human. Only human and Sherry is inhumanly gorgeous.

They’re finishing off their fries when hands land on Robin’s shoulders and she nearly jumps out of her skin, turning to see Steve’s smirk. “You ladies having a nice lunch?”

“Fuck off, Steve.”

Sherry’s face is guarded. “Who’s this?”

“Oh, just my asshole friend,” Robin says and gives him a shove. “Now, seriously, fuck off, dingus.”

Steve throws her a wink as he walks away, hands in the air innocently. Sure, he means well, but does he really think he’s helping? Does he really?

The conversation is a little stilted after that. Sherry watches Steve collecting his takeout with a suspicious expression and even when he’s gone she’s still not entirely at ease. Robin gets it, if she’s right in thinking that Sherry is like her. Everyone looks like an enemy when you’ve got something to hide.

“So what music are you into? Aside from Queen, and the Stones and Bowie?”

“I love The Clash. London Calling, Rock the Casbah, Should I Stay or Should I Go - all the classics.”

“Oh, my friend’s obsessed with them. They’re growing on me, I gotta admit. I think my favorite bands are the Talking Heads or the B-52s.”

Sherry’s eyes come alive again. “Shit, I love the B-52s! I’ve been looking for their records on vinyl for ages but I can only come up with cassette.”

Robin gives her a smug smile. “I have Wild Planet on vinyl at home. It’s great- the sound quality-”

“Holy shit, can we listen to it?” Then she flushes, and looks down at the table. It’s the first time she hasn’t been composed all day. Robin finds she likes it - the way her eyebrows knit together in a cute frown.

“Sure,” Robin finds herself saying. “I- I can’t tonight, but maybe tomorrow evening? Here-” She grabs Sherry’s wrist before she can think better of it and pulls out a pen, scribbles her address on her palm. “See you at six?”

Sherry’s eyes meet hers. She’s close enough that her breath wafts Robin’s hair, and her eyes are dark and deep enough to melt into. “See you then,” she whispers. God fucking damn it, Robin’s gay.

--

Robin spends her evening not at home, moping on her bed with The Cure about how beautiful this girl is as she expected, but smoking a joint with Steve, Jonathan and Nancy on the roof of Steve’s car. (Nancy? Smoking a joint? Stranger things have happened, she supposes.)

“What does your mom think about all this?” she asks Jonathan hazily, struck by sudden curiosity. There have to be limits, right? Joyce can’t be cool in every respect.

But apparently she can, because Jonathan shrugs. “She’s okay with it. Pretty sure she used to smoke weed as a teenager. She should probably still do it, it might calm her down.”

Nancy laughs. “God, you don’t know how lucky you are. My mom would probably have a stroke if she saw us right now.”

“Same,” Robin says. She slips the proffered joint from Jonathan’s fingers and takes a long, deep drag, before passing it back to Steve.

“Nah, I don’t think mine really gives a shit. As long as I’m not directly affecting her - trashing the house, using up her money - she doesn’t care. My dad just doesn’t want me to ‘disgrace’ his good name.” Steve makes air quotes around the word. “Asshole.”

“You’re not disgracing anything,” Robin says. “I’m sure being a dingus is genetic in the Harrington line.”

He swats her on the shoulder while Jonathan and Nancy laugh disproportionately loud.

“You know, I used to think you were a priss?” Robin says to Nancy, made brave and possibly stupid by the weed-induced haze.

She quirks an eyebrow. “And now?”

“Now you’re a fucking badass, is what I think. Like… holy shit.”

“Thank you.” She sounds earnest. “But so are you - I mean, working out that Russian code? That’s seriously smart.”

Robin flushes and Steve rolls his eyes almost audibly. “What is this? Stop being so weird and go back to teasing each other.”

“I was only ever teasing you,” she reminds him, and gives Nancy a grin. If she hadn’t met Sherry earlier that day maybe her heart would be fluttering, but all she feels is warm. Nancy could be a friend, she thinks. A good one.

“The stars are so nice,” Jonathan says, leaning back, spacy.

Robin leans back too. The sky is clear, dark, scattered with bright stars in faint patterns. “It is. You know any constellations?”

“Nah,” he says. “Only the Big Dipper, but everyone knows that one. Mom taught it to us one night when Lonnie was fuck knows where.”

“Your dad sounds like shit,” Steve says. His voice is earnest. “I’m sorry. I know I complain about mine, but-“

“Yeah, it’s okay.” He blows out smoke in a hazy cloud. “Mom’s all the parent we need.”

“Yeah, she’s great.” Steve sighs. “I guess it all balances out, you know? You have one shit parent and one great one, I have two mediocre ones.”

“It balances out,” Jonathan echoes.

“I guess.” Robin rests her head on Steve’s knees. “God, this is so much better than the stuff the Russians gave us.”

“Oh, yeah, that was wild.”

“I still can’t believe they just drugged you. I would have expected, like, waterboarding or something at least.” Nancy looks over at her, plucking the joint from between Jonathan’s fingers. “You got off lightly.”

“Tell that to my broken nose,” Steve huffs.

“Okay.” She laughs and touches his nose, and he yelps.

“I didn’t mean literally!”

Robin meets Jonathan’s eyes in the dark. He’s smiling, widely and openly, and she realises that so is she.

Chapter Text

Robin takes her hands off the handlebars and wipes furiously at her eyes, because they’re stinging again. And it’s not that she doesn’t want to cry - because she does, she really fucking does - but she’s not doing this on Main Street. Not in front of Melvald and Mrs Henderson and Gary her boss from the fucking music store. He called her, told her not to bother coming back tomorrow. Told her if she was gonna blow off her shifts that was her prerogative but he wasn’t gonna pay her for it, goddamn it. And somehow that wasn’t the worst thing that happened to her today.

She has to swallow a sob when she passes Benny’s. Only yesterday - only fucking yesterday-

She’d been on a date, for all intents and purposes. A date with a gorgeous girl who likes girls too, apparently, but now it’s too late for all that. Robin can’t think about Sherry without a sick twisting feeling in her gut. The thought of a burger from Benny’s makes her feel physically ill. Maybe she’ll never be able to go there again.

She just threw a mixtape into her walkman, not even looking at the title, but somehow it feels vaguely appropriate. You’re out of touch, I’m out of time, croons Daryl Hall in her ears. It’s not even her scene, musically, it’s just something she was toying with giving to Steve in a possible attempt at musical education, and it’s too upbeat for the tears threatening to stream down her face, but it feels right. Her mom’s out of touch, and Robin’s living in entirely the wrong time to be Robin.

“Fuck,” she says as a stray tear escapes. She’s sure passers-by are staring, so she keeps her eyes on the road. She doesn’t want to see them. People who would reject and revile her without knowing anything about it, about her. Just like her mom.

The funny thing is - and Robin almost laughs at it, hysterically - is that her mom doesn’t care to know anything else about her. Her mom doesn’t know what music she likes, what books she reads, what movies she watches. She doesn’t know her favorite food or her favorite color. Doesn’t know where Robin wants to go to college - not that Robin knows herself, yet. She knows shit all about her life but now when she knows this one thing-

Suddenly it’s not okay. Suddenly it’s betrayal and tears and oh, Robin. It’s you’re disgracing us, you’re disgracing me, can’t you see that? It’s we struggle enough in this town without you and your- your perverted lifestyle.

She wasn’t kicked out, not in so many words. Her mom finished her tirade and stood silently with a clenched jaw while Sherry grabbed her jacket and left, face white as chalk. Robin could only stare at the carpet as the record continued to spin on the turntable, the B-52s continued to sing, Private Idaho continued to play and seemed to never end. Finally she got up and removed it, cutting the music into silence so abruptly it hurt. She slid it back into the paper sleeve, carefully folding over the edges as if everything that had just happened hadn’t happened. As if she was ever going to be able to listen to Wild Planet again.

“Your father won’t want to see you,” her mom said finally. She wasn’t looking at Robin and her voice was trembling.

“What? Mom- you don’t have to tell him-”

“I am not participating in this- this perverted subterfuge, Robin! I am not your co-conspirator, I am your mother and I want you to stop this!”

“And what if I don’t?” She felt unusually brave, reckless. She had nothing much left to lose. She met her mom’s eyes. “What if I can’t?”

Her mom just shook her head, a hand covering her mouth. “Robin- you’ve been a disappointment before, but this-”

There was more, and worse, but Robin isn’t willing to dwell on that. The facts of the whole fucking matter are: she brought a girl home, she kissed said girl, her mom walked in, and now she’s basically homeless.

Her first kiss, as well. If it hadn’t ended so awfully Robin would be crowing right now - might even have phoned up Steve to brag, because she’s getting way more action than he is - but she’s not. It was a good kiss. Sherry had leaned over, her intent clear in her deep, dark eyes, and Robin had leaned in too. It was soft, and warm, and probably would have gotten a hell of a lot warmer had her mom not walked in.

The music had been too loud, see. Her mom was meant to be out, but she wasn’t, and then because of the thumping bass Robin couldn’t hear the creak of the stairs. And then that was that.

She probably won’t be seeing Sherry again, she thinks. Shame. She really fucking liked her.

The song has changed to Bowie’s Modern Love by the time she’s nearing her destination - her only possible destination, really. The only place she’s felt at home in weeks. She removes her headphones with a trace of irony - her love is far too goddamn modern - and at the silence her eyes once again begin to water. She can’t do this, she really can’t. Coming here was a stupid idea anyway, because what the fuck is she gonna say? She can’t tell them the truth, because then they might kick her out too and they’ll hate her and she’ll have no one but Steve-

(She loves Steve, but she needs more than just him.)

But maybe they won’t ask. Or maybe they’ll take her silence as an answer, that she doesn’t want to talk about it. They won’t push her, right? They’re nice, understanding. Maybe it will all be okay.

She hesitates on the porch, takes a deep breath. In the silence after she’s knocked before the door opens she almost turns tail and flees, some fight or flight instinct shooting through her veins. Her hands are trembling by her sides. It strikes her suddenly that she didn’t bring anything with her - clothes, even a toothbrush - just herself.

And then the door opens. It’s Joyce, looking distracted and fidgety. But when she sees Robin her eyes widen, her tense expression softening, and Robin bursts into tears.

“Hey, hey,” Joyce whispers into her hair as she tugs her into a hug. “What’s wrong, sweetie?’

Robin says nothing, only allows herself to be held. Joyce is so, so warm, and she doesn’t want the embrace to end. Doesn’t want to face reality, such as it is. The reality that she doesn’t really have parents anymore. That she may not even have a Joyce, if she lets too much slip. So she bites her tongue.

She’s barely aware of Joyce pulling her inside, closing the door, sitting her on the couch. The older woman strokes her hair like her mom used to do when she was small - and that just makes her cry harder, and harder. She sobs into Joyce’s arms and Joyce, bless her, doesn’t question it at all. Only makes soft, sympathetic noises and calls her ‘sweetie’, which Robin would probably find annoying at any other time from anyone else but now it’s just comforting, endearing.

When she’s cried herself out she lies there for a moment, her head still pillowed in Joyce’s lap. Joyce’s hands card gently through her hair. “Are you ready to talk about it?” she asks, voice ever so soft.

Slowly, Robin sits up and looks at her. She’s still in her navy work smock, which is now damp with Robin’s tears, but her face betrays nothing but maternal concern. Like she really cares - which makes a change from everyone else in Robin’s life.

Nonetheless, Robin shakes her head.

“You sure? It helps, you know. I know people say that but it really does.”

She wipes at her eyes and shrugs. “Where’re Jonathan and Will?”

Joyce, wisely, doesn’t press the issue. “Jonathan’s got a late shift at work, and Will’s playing that Dungeons and Dragons thing with his friends at the Wheelers’. It’s just me tonight.”

“Oh.” Robin feels suddenly, horribly guilty. Joyce was probably looking forward to her nice quiet evening alone, a respite from all the chaos the kids bring, and now Robin has come and ruined it all for her. “I’m sorry- I shouldn’t have come here-”

“No, stop.” Joyce catches her wrist and holds her there, like she can sense that Robin is about to bolt. “You know you can talk to me, right? If something’s bothering you- anything at all-” She stops and eyes Robin carefully, with a gaze that’s all too knowing. “Did something happen at home? Is that why you’re upset?”

“I don’t wanna talk about it,” Robin mumbles, then shuts her mouth because she’s not sure she can stop herself spilling it all out.

Joyce looks at her for another long moment. Then she stands up, tugging Robin up with her. “Okay. But you’re having something to eat. It’s late and no doubt you haven’t eaten a thing.”

She’s right about that. At even the mention of food Robin’s stomach rumbles. She follows Joyce into the kitchen where she’s promptly handed a massive slice of leftover pizza, decorated with mushrooms and bell pepper. “I would cook, but…” Joyce says, expression self-deprecating. “I hope you like vegetables. Will and his friends ordered pizza the other night and Will has, well, weird taste.”

Robin’s already halfway through the slice, despite its being cold and generally unappetising. Crying makes you hungry, apparently. Ravenous, even. Joyce is watching with something like amusement.

“Thanks,” Robin says when she’s finished, her mouth still half-full with the last slice. “That was great.”

Joyce smiles, but then her expression becomes tender and serious. “Robin- do you have somewhere to sleep tonight?”

She’s guessed. Somehow, Robin doesn’t know how, she’s fucking guessed. A motherly instinct, perhaps, except Robin’s mother doesn’t know up from down. Joyce is a fucking godsend. Doubly so, because it means Robin doesn’t have to beg.

Slowly, she shakes her head. It’s shameful, painful, but Joyce is so bright and caring she thinks that maybe she doesn’t mind.

“Well, if you don’t mind sleeping in Will’s bed you can stay there for the night, and then if you still need to stay I’ll find you a bed, okay?”

She bites her lip. Joyce is being kind - too kind - and Robin’s not sure how to process it. A simple thank you’s not enough - it will never be enough - but she says it anyway. “Thank you.”

“Oh, Robin.” Joyce’s hand finds her shoulder and squeezes, a touch maternal and comforting. “I’m exhausted, I gotta go to bed, but feel free to, you know, wait up til Jonathan gets home. Or don’t, I mean, it’s up to you.”

“Thanks,” Robin says again. It still doesn’t cover it.

--

She wakes to an unfamiliar ceiling and unfamiliar bedsheets and has to lie there for a moment to recall where she is. The Byers’ house, she thinks. A sanctuary. And that’s what it feels like, with the golden morning light streaming in from the gap in the curtains. It feels safe.

Joyce had lent her shorts and a sweatshirt that she’s pretty sure is a man’s size, and she doesn’t bother to change as she goes out to the kitchen. She’ll make breakfast again, she decides, like she did before. Maybe it will go some way to easing the massive debt she finds herself owing.

(Flashes of the day before cross her mind - Sherry’s red lips, her mom’s tight frown, Joyce’s soft embrace. Robin flinches away from them.)

She’s got her headphones on while she cooks, nodding her head along to The The, so she doesn’t hear Jonathan’s approach. He taps her on the shoulder and she nearly jumps out of her skin.

“Hey,” she says cautiously, when she’s tugged her headphones down to around her neck.

“Hey. What’re you making?”

“Poached eggs. You guys seemed to like them last time, so.”

He smiles. “I look forward to them.” He leans back against the counter, watching her cook. His demeanour is casual, but she can tell he’s wondering why she’s here. She doesn’t blame him. “Mom had an early shift, but she’ll be back around lunchtime.”

“I thought she was done working at Melvald’s?” She’s deliberately dodging the question in his eyes.

“Tomorrow’s her last day. She still hasn’t found another job, though. I don’t know what we’re gonna do,” he admits quietly. Robin feels almost guilty for not sharing her own crisis.

“She’ll find something. Now that the mall’s gone all the small businesses are opening up again.”

“Yeah, but that didn’t stop Donald fucking Melvald from making her redundant. She’s been working there twelve years now, and yet he sacks her like that.” He clicks his fingers and sighs. “Sorry. I shouldn’t burden you with this.”

“No, don’t worry. It’s almost a relief to find out my family’s not the only one with problems.”

Maybe she said too much, because Jonathan is looking at her through his bangs with a careful glance. “Are you, you know, okay?”

Hurriedly she turns back to the eggs. Her eyes are probably still a little red, she realises, from crying herself to sleep last night. “I’m fine.” She plates up a perfect poached egg and uses it to distract him, wafting it under his nose. “Now, enjoy. Or else I’ll invite the dingus over and he’ll eat the whole lot in ten seconds flat.”

He smirks and grabs the plate. “I better eat up then.”

She sits across from him at the table as they eat and the morning is beautiful, quiet. Like nothing happened, only everything did. She has to take a moment to wonder at the absurdity of her life, that being kidnapped by Russian spies is somehow less cataclysmic than her mom finding out she’s gay.

Her mom finding out she’s gay. Fuck, that really happened, didn’t it.

“I got fired,” she blurts out, because Jonathan clearly wants some kind of explanation. “I, um- I missed too many shifts. I’m lazy, basically.”

He raises an eyebrow. “He fired you? Shit, that sucks.” But there’s a thread of judgement in his eyes. And she gets it. He can’t afford to get fired from a job. She’s heard the whole Hawkins Post saga, and how conflicted it was. But this is less likely to alienate him than the gay thing, so she’s gonna run with it.

“My mom kicked me out.”

His face immediately changes. Disapproval melts away, replaced by horrified sympathy. “God, that’s awful. Just for losing your job? Holy shit. I’m so sorry, Robin.”

She shrugs. “I mean, she might let me come back, like, eventually, but.” But, she doubts it. “Your mom said I could stay for a bit, if that- if that’s okay. Obviously I’ll contribute to groceries and stuff.”

He looks a little relieved at that last bit, but there’s no trace of reluctance on his face. “Sure, I mean, stay as long as you need. I can’t believe she kicked you out.”

“Neither can I,” she says, but really she can.

He finishes his eggs and moves to the sink to wash up his plate. “I have to pick up Will soon, and then Mom wants the posts on the porch repainted so I’m gonna do that. You could come with me to pick up Will if you want, or…”

“I can make a start on the painting if you want.” She’s itching to do something. She’s gonna go stir crazy left in this house on her own, doing nothing. Just thinking, thinking about Sherry and her mom and how everything went so wrong.

He blinks in surprise. “Uh, sure, if you want. I’ll show you where the paint is.”

So she spends the next few hours sweating under the July sun, painting coat after coat of white paint onto the wooden posts on the Byers’ porch. It’s hard work, but rewarding when she steps back and admires her handiwork. Besides, she has her walkman to keep her company. She lets The Cure drown out the sound of her heartbeat.

After a while Jonathan joins her, and by the time lunchtime comes around and Joyce’s tiny green Pinto swings into the drive they’re almost done. “That’s looking great, guys,” she says as she walks up the porch. “I’ll make you some sandwiches? Robin, what fillings do you like?”

And so life goes on.

Chapter Text

That night Robin has further dark, twisted dreams. Endless corridors under neon malls and men in uniforms chasing and chasing her - only when she looks around, twists to see while she’s still running with heart pounding, their faces change and it’s her parents. Chasing her with faces contorted in hatred, rage, disgust. They want her to go away, but she has nowhere to go. No escape.

She wakes with a jolt and has to bite down the scream that rises in her throat. The room is dark and silent and she doesn’t want to wake her hosts, doesn’t want to cause yet more trouble for them. She’s been relegated to the couch, now, with a duvet far too thick for the hot weather, because Will’s home from his sleepover, but she doesn’t mind. It’s a million times better than nothing, and nothing is what she was facing before.

(She’s spoken to Steve. When she mentioned where she was staying - Oh, Mrs Byers is putting me up for a couple nights - he’d sounded surprised. “You could’ve stayed with me,” he said, but then before she could reply he answered himself. “Though actually my dad’s still here and he’d never let me have a girl stay over.”

She’d laughed a little instead of crying. “It’s a good thing Mrs Byers is nicer than your dad, then, huh?”

“They really kicked you out?” His voice was soft.

“Yeah, uh- it sucks. But- y’know. It was gonna happen eventually - them finding out.”

“You think they’ll let you come back?”

Robin had stared at the wall and shrugged, although she knew he couldn’t see her. “Who knows.” She didn’t - she doesn’t - have the strength to consider that, not now. She’s not sure she wants to look at her future and see what it holds.)

She can’t go back to sleep, not now. It’s hot and stuffy in the house and her mind is racing despite the tiredness clogging her limbs. She throws the covers back and swings her legs to the floor, digging her walkman and headphones out of her bag. Outside she can find some peace, she thinks, or at least some fresh air.

She sits on the swinging bench on the Byers’ porch with her favorite New Order album. She closes her eyes to the tune of Dreams Never End and tries to forget she’s got a physical form at all.

That is, until she feels someone settling next to her, the bench creaking a little as they sit down. She opens her eyes and tugs her headphones down to her neck, cutting the music off in the middle of a lyric. It’s Joyce.

She’s swallowed up in some oversized flannel Robin’s pretty sure she’s seen on the Chief and her hands are shaking slightly, but she greets Robin with a smile. “Hey. Couldn’t sleep?”

Robin shakes her head.

“Neither could I. It’s so hot.”

“I-” She sighs and looks down at her hands. “I had another nightmare.” She’s not sure why she’s telling Joyce this. Maybe some childish desire for comfort, for support, the support her real mother is supposed to be giving her right about now.

“About what happened at the mall?”

She nods. But then the silence stretches on, like Joyce is waiting for more of an answer, and Robin can’t help but continue, the words spilling out of their own accord entirely. “The Russians were there, yeah, they were chasing me, but then- then their faces changed, and suddenly they weren’t Russian at all, they- they were my parents.” She delivers this last confession in a whisper.

“Your parents?” Joyce’s hand lands on hers and the touch is so soft and warm that Robin’s eyes begin to sting.

She nods blindly. “What am I supposed to do?” Her voice breaks.

Joyce pulls her into a full hug, burying Robin’s head in her shoulder. “I don’t know, sweetie. And god, I- I want to help you. But you gotta tell me how. I can’t do anything unless you tell me what’s going on.”

Robin tenses up and Joyce pulls back. No- she can’t- she can’t tell her. She can’t. “I can’t.”

Joyce’s expression is heartbreakingly careful and gentle and it just makes Robin cry harder. “Why not?” she asks, ever so tentatively, like Robin’s a wounded animal she’s found in the yard that might bolt any second.

“Because- because you won’t like me anymore. None of you will. You’ll hate me and I’ll have to leave and I- I don’t wanna leave.”

“Robin-” Joyce is leaning close now, looking her straight in the eyes. “Nothing you say or do will make me hate you. Unless you killed a man, but to be honest if you killed a man he probably deserved it.”

She smiles and Robin gives a watery, involuntary laugh. But then her smile drops and she looks away again, chewing on her lip. Can she really tell her? No, she can’t. Can she?

If Steve was so progressive as to be understanding, as to be okay with it, then surely Joyce has to be. Rich, jerk, jock Steve Harrington and poor, outcast, single mom Joyce Byers - she has to understand. Right? Maybe she won’t kick her out.

And maybe she won’t let Robin stay unless she tells her what the problem is. Maybe her secrecy will only make things worse.

But more than that - more than any of that - Robin actually wants to tell her. Wants to spill this dark secret that’s been eating away at her heart. It would make her feel so much better, if Joyce accepts her for who she is. She could confidently say a solid fuck you to her mom, because Joyce would be the only mom she’d ever need.

And Joyce’s hugs are so nice.

So-

(Here goes.)

“I met this girl at the record store, and we got to talking, and we got lunch, and I invited her over to my house to listen to this record I have. And it turns out-” her voice has become impossibly quiet “- my mom was home. Only, I didn’t realise, and this girl-” She takes a breath. This is the moment it all comes down to, isn’t it? Joyce is looking at her intently, but her expression is unreadable in the dark. “I kissed her.”

There’s a second of silence. Robin feels forced to continue, now that she’s started. She may as well.

“I kissed her, and my mom saw, and then-”

“And then she kicked you out,” Joyce finishes. Her voice is toneless and Robin winces - but then Joyce’s hands find her shoulders and she looks her deep in the eyes. “Robin, I need you to know something, okay? This house- it’s not a place of judgement. At all. I can’t even imagine doing what your mom did because my boys? I would do anything for them. I’d go to the end of the earth for them, and- well- I have. So rejecting them - and anyone else - for something they couldn’t do anything to help? Something that- well, maybe it’s not normal, and maybe it makes your life that much harder, but it’s natural and not weird or wrong or whatever the hell else they say about it. So, and I promise you this, I’m not gonna make you leave. You can stay here as long as you need. Bills might be tight but we’ll manage, and if you keep making such good breakfasts then I’m sure we’re even.”

Robin stares. She stares and then the tears fall harder, because this is better than she could ever have imagined and it feels so good to say it. So, so good to say it and not be treated with scorn. Judy left, Steve just said a gentle, kindly ‘oh’, her mother kicked her out, but Joyce- Joyce gives her a whole speech about love and acceptance and Robin is awestruck.

(If she’s right about Will then that kid is the luckiest gay kid on earth.)

“Thank you,” she whispers when she can finally get words out.

“You don’t have to thank me, it’s-” Joyce sighs. “You shouldn’t have to thank me.”

Robin wipes at her eyes and looks out at the yard, so empty and still. Joyce and Jonathan’s cars parked side by side. The freshly painted white posts, the porch light casting a faint golden glow. “But I am.”

Joyce brings her in for another hug and Robin all but melts into it. “Sorry, you probably wanted some peace and quiet out here,” she says, voice a little self-deprecating.

“Peace and quiet? God, I never get a moment of peace and quiet. I’m used to it. And this- this is more important, okay?”

“Okay.” Robin wipes at her eyes again, smudges away fresh tears. She never used to cry this much. She’s not a pussy. But then again, sitting here in the dark with Joyce Byers whom Steve has dubbed supermom, crying doesn’t feel like weakness. It could almost be strength.

--

The next morning Robin decides it’s officially her duty to make breakfast, so she heads to the kitchen before anyone else is up. Poached eggs are getting a bit old, maybe, so she searches the cupboards for other ingredients. (Makes a mental note of what she uses and what, therefore, she’ll go to the store to replace.)

She finds a half decent non-stick pan, too, and is flipping the first pancake when Will walks in.

“Pancakes? Wow,” he says. “If only El was here. She loves pancakes.”

“Oh yeah?” Robin plates up the pancake and hands it to him, watching him douse it in maple syrup with faint disgust.

“Yeah. But not as much as she loves Eggos.”

“Eggos? Those gross frozen waffle things?”

“Uh huh.” Will takes a bite of the pancake and his eyes widen. “No, seriously, you have to teach us to cook. These are so good.”

Robin shrugs. “I think your mom’s a lost cause. I’m sure I can give you and Jonathan lessons though, if you promise not to play The Clash.”

He shakes his head with a smile. “You’re so, so wrong about them.”

“If you say so.” She pours the next round of pancake mix into the pan. “You think Jonathan and your mom will want some?”

“Jonathan, sure. Mom doesn’t really eat breakfast.” He shrugs, sliding into a chair at the table facing her. “Jonathan’s always trying to convince her but it never works. Maybe these will help, though. They’re amazing.”

“You’re welcome,” she says with a grin. Then she surveys the empty kitchen and thinks - well. This is as good an opportunity as any. She plates herself up a pancake and goes to sit opposite Will. “So, uh, there was something I wanted to talk to you about.”

Immediately he looks on edge. And she guesses that’s fair; after all, serious talks can only spell bad things in Hawkins, in the Byers household specifically. But she hopes he feels he can trust her, at least a little bit. She is staying in their house, after all.

“I- um-” She sighs. She doesn’t know where to start. They have so much in common, and yet so little. Then there’s a burst of muffled music behind her and she starts, looking at Will in askance.

“Jonathan’s morning playlist. He’ll be out here in, like, ten minutes.”

It’s a good playlist. The Velvet Underground - she hasn’t heard them in a while. But that’s irrelevant, and now she has a time limit. “I was talking to your mom last night, and I- I think-” Shit, she’s bad at this. How in the hell does she say this without scaring him off? He’s so much younger than her, she has to remember, and her experience wasn’t exactly a cakewalk. Still isn’t. “I think there’s something you wanna say. Not necessarily to me- it doesn’t have to be to me- or to anyone specific. Just- I think I’m right in saying that you’ve been waiting to tell someone, and I wanna let you know that- you can. And I can promise you it won’t go as badly as you think.”

He’s studying the stained wood of the table, his finger tracing a knot in it. Not meeting her eyes.

“I just- I know you don’t know me very well. And I don’t know you. But you look like you need to say it, and well- I just thought that maybe if I asked, I’d be asking the right question.”

He takes the final bite of his pancake and finally, finally looks at her. His eyes are brimming with unshed tears. “Why would you-” His voice breaks.

She doesn’t break eye contact. Doesn’t look away, although it’s painful, heart wrenching. “Because I know what it’s like,” she whispers.

He stares at her. “You mean-”

But then Jonathan enters the room and they both lapse into silence. Robin’s heart is racing with adrenaline and she feels almost nauseous, sick with relief. She’s right, and she didn’t screw it up, and maybe she actually helped. Maybe this shitty situation she’s found herself in can help Will too.

Joyce is the last to emerge and she looks tired, eyes shadowed and fingers trembling almost imperceptibly around her cigarette. She declines the pancakes but takes Jonathan’s offer of a coffee and smiles at Robin over the table, like both nothing and everything changed the night before. She ruffles Will’s hair and touches Jonathan’s shoulder and smiles at Robin like they’re maybe all one big family - like maybe this can work.

“Alright, I’m going out soon, but Hopper’s picking me up and he’s bringing El over, if you guys could keep her and Will company.”

Jonathan sighs, but only slightly. Robin’s pretty sure she’s the only one who hears it.

“I’m right here,” Will reminds them.

“Of course you are, sweetie,” Joyce says, ruffling his hair again and looking at Jonathan over his head.

“Yeah, and I don’t need to be kept company.”

She sighs. “I’m sorry, baby, I just- after everything, just humor me, okay?”

After a moment, Will nods. “Okay.”

Just like that, their conflict is resolved. Robin only wishes her life were so simple. “Hey, Jonathan, I heard your music earlier. The Velvet Underground? That’s, like, seriously good taste.”

He nods with a smile and opens his mouth to respond but Joyce beats him to it.

“Aha, that’s my one claim to fame in this household. I introduced this guy-” she nudges his shoulder “- to the Velvet Underground. Pretty sure it’s where his love of rock came from.”

“That doesn’t mean I like Blondie, though,” he says, rubbing his neck a little nervously - an unwarranted movement. Robin is loving this.

She grins. “You can still appreciate your roots, though, right, Mrs Byers?”

Joyce groans. “Joyce, please.”

“Joyce,” Robin corrects. “Sorry.”

She meets Will’s eyes as the conversation continues and moves away. He’s still looking fragile, emotional. Shoulders tense under his striped t-shirt. But he meets her gaze and doesn’t look away, and- well- she thinks she can see some gratitude in it.

Chapter Text

When El arrives Will sits her down in front of Star Trek and spends the whole time pointing at the screen, explaining characters and planets and storylines. Robin supposes he’s glad not to be the baby, for once - not to be the one that needs looking after. Not to be the one who doesn’t know everything.

Jonathan’s got a day off from the bookstore. Joyce, when she left with Hopper, looping her bag nervously over her shoulder and looking the kids over as if to check they were still there, had asked him to oil the porch swing. Robin, feeling the keen absence of anything to do, had offered to help. So here they are, crouching on the porch with greasy hands, eyes watering from the smell.

“You know, it’s really great of you to help- like, around the house. I mean it.”

She looks at him. “Jonathan, you get that it’s the least that I can do, right? I mean, your mom letting me stay-”

He goes silent and still. She might have to tell him, she thinks with a sudden drop of her stomach. She might have to tell him or risk alienating him completely. He doesn’t trust easy, she’s noticed. She doesn’t blame him.

“I-” she starts, then swallows, dry-mouthed. But she’s saved by a car pulling up, and as it turns out it’s Steve - bored by the lack of company, most likely. She’s relieved, and not just because she’s missed him.

“Training to be a decorator?” he quips, half-assed, as he walks up to the porch.

Jonathan straightens up and wipes his forehead with the back of his sleeve. “Can I help you, Harrington?”

Steve shrugs. True to form, he then says, “I was bored.”

“So you came and interrupted us.” Jonathan sighs. “At least tell me you brought lunch.”

Obligingly he holds up a large, stuffed brown paper bag. “Benny’s. I know better than to come here without food.”

Robin has to refrain from flinching at the name, but somehow she manages. Both she and Jonathan strip off their gloves and go inside with Steve, where Jonathan pries the food out of Steve’s hands and shares it out onto plates. “El and Will too,” he says sternly when Steve tries to protest. Robin smirks a little.

When he’s gone to give them their burgers and fries, she has a moment alone with Steve, and he takes the opportunity to look at her. Really look at her, look her over, like he’s worried about her. Like he really cares.

“You okay?”

She shrugs. “The Byers are- well- looking after me.”

“Yeah?” He quirks an eyebrow. “Including supermom?”

She shoves his shoulder. “Dingus. Joyce is- Joyce is great.” She sighs, looks down at the floor. “I told her. About- y’know.”

He looks surprised; a little concerned. “And? Was it…” he lowers his voice, “okay?”

She nods. “It was fine. It was more than fine, I mean, Steve- I know you’re joking and all, but she’s fucking amazing. I mean, I look at my mom, and I think-” She breaks off. She doesn’t know what she thinks. Only that Joyce is so much kinder, and cooler, and better in every single fucking aspect and Robin wishes- god, she fucking wishes-

“What did I tell you?” He’s grinning. “Joyce is great. She’s, like, all of our moms at this point. I knew she’d understand.”

But he doesn’t get it. He didn’t know she’d understand - neither did Robin. It could have gone either way. Steve doesn’t get the risk, the stakes. He doesn’t get the way her heart was pounding.

But still, she asks - “What about Jonathan? I mean, you’ve known him longer than me. You think he’d, y’know, understand?”

Steve is looking at her carefully. “Robin- I gotta tell you-”

“What?”

“A couple years ago, until just after Will got stuck in the Upside Down, I was- well. I was a class A asshole. The real fucking-” He sighed. “Anyway, I- um, I said some shit. To everyone, really, but I said some shit to Jonathan. Some shit that kind of… y’know, insinuated-”

Her gaze sharpens and she becomes fatefully aware of the tight air trembling in between them.

He visibly takes a deep, deep breath. “I called him a queer. And- I don’t know if I’m even allowed to say that- and I’m sorry. God, I’m sorry, Robin. I was hanging out with these awful people-”

“Tommy and Carol.” She knows them well enough.

“Tommy and Carol,” he repeats. “God, they sucked. And I- well, I’ve been on an apology tour for two years now, but I mean it. I do. I’m sorry.”

Slowly, she shifts her gaze from the floor to him. He looks in earnest. Looks so repentant he could cry. (If only- her mom-) “Okay,” she says. “But, like, maybe you should apologise to Jonathan too? I mean, I’m the last person who’s gonna say it’s an insult, but…”

“Yeah,” he says, and just like that it’s resolved. “Yeah, of course. Believe it or not I was on my way to apologise two years ago when we were attacked by the Demogorgon, which wasn’t really my fault, but I never got around to it after.”

She’s nodding at him, about to ask him again, because he hasn’t quite answered her question, when Jonathan comes back in. He looks between them a little suspiciously, significantly, in the exact same way that Joyce has of knowing he’s missed something important. But at the end of the day he just shrugs. “Nice burgers.”

“Can’t go far wrong with Benny’s,” Steve says, and once again Robin feels her stomach drop. God, why does everything have to be so different for her? Why does it all have to be so much harder?

“How’s your dad been lately?” she says, to distract herself. To distract them all.

Steve shrugs. “Okay, I guess. I think he’s finally giving up on the whole job thing. Which is good, except he expects me to join the family fucking business, so.”

“Nice tidy sum, though, I bet,” Jonathan says, a little too evenly.

“Sure. I’d trade it all for a bit of, y’know, recognition, though.” And once again, there’s not a trace of irony in Steve’s words. Robin is watching Jonathan - she sees the way his eyes narrow - but she also sees the earnest surprise, even commiseration, in his face at this. Maybe they’ve all got advantages, in the end, to go along with their crushing defeats.

Finally, Jonathan seems to relent. “Fuck, I’m tired,” he says. “I’m tired of this whole money thing. Y’know? Maybe we should just- just, get rid of it all.”

“No more money.” She smiles.

“”Burn it all. Make a massive bonfire some cold fall night.”

“God, I’d like that. Maybe throw an effigy of my dad on the fire while we’re at it.” Steve - rich, eminent Steve - seems fully on board.

“And mine.” Jonathan’s voice is quiet, full of meaning and rage. Again, Robin reflects that she’s here and she’s involved and she’s witnessing it all, when she doesn’t really know what it all means. Maybe Lonnie Byers walked out on them or maybe he hurt them - she doesn’t know any of it. Doesn’t really think she has a right to know.

She’s been silent for a while, so she’s surprised when Jonathan turns to her. “You wanna chuck your mom on there too?”

She chuckles quietly, almost privately. What she wouldn’t give-

“Fuck, yeah,” she says. Both the boys look satisfied, and they tuck into their burgers like they haven’t just decided to murder one of their parents each.

But then again-

It sounds like they all deserve it.

--

She wakes with another jolt and another panicked sob rising in her throat, the weight of it all crushing her in thin air. The mall- her parents-

It’s suffocating.

She stumbles out of bed - ‘bed’ being a loosely defined term - and instead of going for her walkman, for the door outside to the cool, fresh air, she heads deeper into the house. Tries to still the shaking in her hands as she creeps down the corridor, to a room she’s never been in.

And still won’t go in, because when she nears it she stops still.

The door is slightly ajar, a dim golden light spilling over the carpet and through the gap, and from within she can hear the sound of crying. Frantic, unsteady breaths, and a soothing voice attempting to quiet them.

Joyce and Jonathan.

The sobs are Joyce’s, and it makes Robin stop and reevaluate everything she’s thought up to this point. She’d been coming up the corridor for comfort, only she’s not the one who needs it.

“Mom, it’s okay, it’s okay.” Jonathan’s hushed voice is impossible not to listen to.

“But it’s not- it’s not- I-”

“Mom,” he says again, and she quiets. “What’s going on? Will’s fine, I’m fine, El’s fine, Hopper’s fine-”

“But he wasn’t! He wasn’t, and it was my fault- just like Bob-”

“Mom, you gotta stop blaming yourself- please- just-”

Slowly, Robin withdraws. Creeps back down the corridor and tries to forget all that she’s heard. Okay, so maybe Joyce isn’t okay. But are any of them? And did Robin really, truly expect Joyce to be there for her every night?

On reflection, she thinks that maybe she wasn’t all that there for her the previous nights either. Sure, she let Robin cry into her arms. Sure, she was there as a sympathetic shoulder to sob on and a kindly ear to hear but- was she really all that there?

Each time Robin noticed Joyce’s hands were shaking, although she’s only realised now. Only realised that while she was being so selfish- so goddamn fucking selfish-

She takes a breath. Blaming herself isn’t helpful, not now. Now she’ll just retreat into her walkman and trust that Jonathan can calm his mom down. Can ease her from the panicked precipice she’s found herself on.

She lets Nowhere Fast and the rest of Meat is Murder lull her to sleep, or at least exhaust her with loud and angry drumbeats. She thinks idly as she’s on her way to sleep that Jonathan would approve, if he were here as opposed to calming Joyce down in her room.

And then she thinks of the weirdness of that, again - because Mary? Mary motherfucking Buckley? She’d lock Robin out of the house before offering her an ounce of civility in response to proffered comfort. If Robin woke up to her mom sobbing in her room, her mom would turf her out of the house before she’d let her soothe her back to sleep.

Stark differences, again. So stark it’s like living in a parallel universe - like living on one of those other planets in Star Trek.

The cassette has looped and The Headmaster Ritual has started again when she wakes to a soft creak of the floorboards. It’s Jonathan, coming down the corridor, rubbing a hand over tired eyes.

“Hey,” she says, sitting up and tugging her headphones down.

“Sorry, did I wake you?”

She shakes her head, although she’s pretty sure he did. “I couldn’t sleep anyway.” She looks at him for a moment. “Is your mom okay?”

He regards her suspiciously, before sighing and sitting down on the arm of the sofa, relenting. “Honestly- I don’t know. I’ve calmed her down for now- she’s sleeping, but-” He sighs again. “How much did you hear?”

“Not very much.”

“I just wish-” He cuts himself off. He looks tired, but not like he wants to sleep. More like he wants to be distracted.

She offers up her walkman. “You wanna listen? It’s The Smiths’ latest record.”

He moves closer and she turns it up loud enough that they can both listen through the headphones, leaning so their heads almost knock together. Morrissey croons into their ears and they don’t need words - this silent moment of nothing but music is enough. Jonathan nods his head and slowly the tension seeps out of him. Gradually he moves to sit until they’re both on the couch, their shoulders touching.

As the mellow chords of Well I Wonder die away he sniffs and straightens up, rubbing his eyes again. “Shit, I’m falling asleep. I should go back to bed.”

She nods, turning the music down.

He looks at her hesitantly, poised to move but almost not daring to. “Look, Robin, I’m sorry. I haven’t- well, I haven’t been great to you, these past few days. With everything going on- Mom losing her job- all the shit that happened with the Mall- and Lonnie’s been sniffing around-” He visibly takes a breath. “I just wanna say that, like, it’s not personal, okay?”

“I get it. I just- um-” Maybe now’s the moment. Maybe now’s the time to tell him. He’s been mellowed by the music, by the quiet of the night and the vulnerability of his mom. He’s not so hostile, not right now. “I wouldn’t stay here, be burdening you like this, if- well, if I had anywhere else to go.”

“You don’t have anywhere?” He sounds unbelievably sad at that.

She shakes her head and forces a smile to hide the tears gathering in her eyes. “You know, I mean, it’s fine, but like… my mom, she’s not so understanding as yours. She’s a bit more- well- traditional.”

“What do you mean?” He’s staring at her, almost transfixed.

It’s painful to continue. “I mean-” She swallows. “I like girls, Jonathan. I like girls. That’s why Steve and I found it so hilarious when you thought we were dating- or that I was hitting on you-”

“You like girls,” he repeats lowly.

“Yeah.”

“And Steve knows. And he’s okay with it.”

“... Yeah.”

Suddenly, so suddenly she jolts with surprise, he laughs. “He really has had a turnaround, huh? Gone from hanging around guys who called my brother- well, the ‘F word’- to this. Facing the Demogorgon really changed him, I guess.”

She can’t tell if he’s being sarcastic. Sometimes she gets the sense he doesn’t even like Steve, and yet others they’re thick as thieves.

“I guess you told my mom.”

She nods. Telling Joyce is one thing, but if Jonathan rejects her she can’t really hope to stay. Not under the crushing, awkward tension that will no doubt settle. God, she hopes- she really fucking hopes-

“It’s okay. Seriously, it’s okay. I mean, I’ve been called a freak all my life, what kind of hypocrite would I be if I decided you were one now? No one in this family is normal. We’re- well, I’m used to it by now.”

Her sigh of relief is shaky, tremulous, so desperate her hands shake. That’s it, then. Joyce knows, Jonathan knows, Will all but knows. She’s safe here. They won’t kick her out.

She surges forward and hugs him. He stiffens under her touch like a board, but slowly he softens until it’s a real, warm embrace. “Thank you,” she whispers into his shirt. Maybe she wouldn’t be doing this if it was daylight, if she wasn’t so tired from tossing and turning all night, if he wasn’t so shaken from guiding his mom through a panic attack-

But it isn’t, and she is, and he is. So she hugs him, he hugs back, and ever so quietly That Joke Isn’t Funny Anymore croons in the background.

Chapter Text

The next morning, bright and early, Robin makes them all breakfast. The sun streaming in through the windows, the house already hot and stifling. Soon school will start again and she’ll have to surrender these peaceful mornings for cramped corridors and the assholes that populate them but for now - she can enjoy it.

Nancy arrives when she’s about to put the bread in the oven (because yes, she makes her own bread, and she knows what Steve would say about that), looking happy and strangely un-put-together, and grabs her by the wrist before she can say a word. “We’re going shopping,” Nancy says, all but dragging her out the door.

“Shopping?” Robin manages to inject every single ounce of her disgust into the word. As a rule, she hates shopping. With a vengeance.

Nancy turns those wide blue eyes on her and already her resolve is crumbling. “We’re going shopping, Robin Buckley. Don’t make me take you at gunpoint.” Knowing her, she could. And as if to prove the point, she says, “Because I could, you know. My Smith and Wesson’s still in the glovebox.”

A curious thing, that a girl with a gun still wants to go shopping. Robin has neither a gun nor the desire to go shopping, but she guesses she’s going anyway. She leaves the bread, unbaked, on the counter in a puddle of flour. Hopefully they won’t mind the mess.

Nancy’s car radio is set to some station Robin’s never listened to, but it’s miles better than Steve’s taste. She cringes until Stevie Nicks comes on, and then she relaxes. She has to, right? It’s Stevie Nicks.

“This is weird, isn’t it?” Nancy’s eyes don’t shift from the road.

“Huh? What is?”

“This. Me, you. I don’t know, I just wanna hang out with someone who isn’t a guy or four years younger than me. It’s not that weird, right?”

Robin bites her lip. It doesn’t have to be weird. (Nevermind that for Robin, it’s weird for a totally different reason.) “It’s not weird. Weird is Steve hanging out exclusively with eighth-graders.”

“You’re so right. I mean, Steve and Dustin? Where did that even come from? I mean, it’s probably an upgrade from the assholes he used to hang out with. We used to, really. It was me, too.”

Robin remembers. “Yeah, Carol and Tommy H, right? For a hot sec there you were all thick as thieves.” Maybe it came out a little too bitter, because Nancy glances over at her.

“Yeah, until Barb.” She looks down briefly and then back at the road, hands tight on the steering wheel. “Barb changed everything, really. Or maybe she didn’t, she just made me see what was there all along.”

“I’m sorry. Y’know, about Barb,” Robin offers. She didn’t know Barb, but she knew her better than she knew Nancy. They were both in band for a while. Robin still is.

“It was all a long time ago now,” but Robin can tell by the quaver in her voice she appreciates the gesture. “But, like, since Barb? I haven’t had any female friends. I dropped Carol because you’re right, she’s a bitch. I’m friendly with some of the other girls in our year, but, I don’t know-”

“They don’t know about what happened.” Robin finishes the thought. “I mean, we’re changed by all this, right? The Upside Down crap. Being friends with girls who’ve never had a bad day in their lives doesn’t work anymore.”

“Right.” Nancy is smiling. “That’s why we’re going shopping. It’s good to do something normal with someone who understands, right?”

“Shopping isn’t normal for me,” Robin mutters in an undertone.

“C’mon, it’s gonna be fun.”

Fine, she thinks, but if Nancy even tries to get her into anything pastel she’s leaving immediately. She’ll walk back if she has to.

They’re going downtown, where the shops are slowly springing back to life now the mall’s crushing climbing plant has died back. They pass the record store and Robin sighs. She really is an idiot sometimes. There are only so many jobs available in Hawkins - as evidenced by Joyce’s plight - and at this rate she’s gonna lose her (admittedly puny) college fund. She needs money, and she’s kind of throwing it away.

The next few hours are - well. Not fun, exactly, but neither are they the torture Robin had half expected. Nancy tries on countless dresses, sweaters, skirts, jeans, while Robin mostly watches and makes faces alternately of disgust and approval. (She refuses to approve anything pink or anything pastel.)

She picks through Nancy’s castoffs, out of vague interest and mild boredom. Who knows, maybe there’ll be something here for her, though she always gets her clothes at the thrift store five blocks away. Nothing catches her eye - not until Nancy steps out from behind the curtain in an ill-fitting black top that exposes her shoulders and Robin bites her lip.

“What do you think?” Nancy asks, doing a little twirl.

“You want my honest opinion?” Robin stands up.

“Yes. That’s what you’re here for. I go shopping with Jonathan, he just tells me everything looks great.”

Everything does look great on her, but some better than others. “Then it doesn’t fit you very well, y’know? But I know someone who it would fit perfectly.”

Nancy turns to look her up and down. “Oh my god, you’re right. Please tell me you’re gonna try it on.”

Robin rolls her eyes. “Fine,” she drawls, the final syllable drowned out by Nancy’s wholly uncharacteristic squeal. When Nancy’s put her own t-shirt back on they swap places in the changing room, and yeah. Robin likes the top. She really fucking likes it. She looks at herself in the mirror and it fits in all the places it’s supposed to fit- exposes curves she never knew she had- makes her look like the kind of girl who’s had her first kiss.

“You look fucking hot,” Nancy says as she pulls back the curtain, and Robin blinks in surprise, blushes furiously. For starters, she’s not sure she’s ever heard Nancy say fuck before, and does she really have to say stuff like that? But still. It makes her feel good. Hot, even.

“I do, huh?” She turns back to look at herself in the mirror again. Paired with her jeans, it exposes a small peeping triangle of skin above her waistband, along with pale shoulders wider than Nancy’s - so it fits that much better.

Nancy insists on paying for it. Robin scowls at her the whole way through but she’s not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, so she swallows it in silence. It’s Nancy’s fault anyway, right? They wouldn’t have been in this store if not for her, and they wouldn’t have spotted this top. Robin’s just an innocent bystander in all of this.

(It still tastes weird.)

They’re wandering down the street, Robin with her singular bag, Nancy with her three, when she asks. “Why are you doing this?”

Nancy frowns. “What? I told you, I-”

“Bullshit. I mean sure, that’s probably part of it, but this is so sudden. Dragging me out of the house at eight in the morning. How’d you even know I was there?”

She sighs, and stops walking. Robin faces her in the alcove of a stationery store. “God, you and Jonathan.”

“What?” Robin frowns.

“You’re both so good at detecting bullshit. Like, he can talk to you twice and somehow know you better than you know yourself. You remind me of him a lot.”

She tries not to preen at the compliment.

“Look, he- uh, he called me, late last night. We talk pretty much every day, so it’s not unusual. But he mentioned that you-” Nancy looks uncomfortable. Uncomfortable with the idea, maybe? How much did he tell her? “He told me why your parents kicked you out. And- well, it sucks. And I wanted you to feel like you weren’t alone.”

Robin feels the sudden urge to cry. Nancy- even Nancy. Nancy the daughter of two prominent, well-to-do Republicans, Hawkins’ most notorious picket fence, accepts her despite everything. Goes out of her way to do so. Sure, it wasn’t Robin’s first choice of how to spend her day. But that’s better, she thinks. If Nancy were catering to Robin’s every whim it would definitely feel weird. This doesn’t feel out of the ordinary at all, really, which makes a change for all the shit she’s been through these past weeks.

“Thanks,” she manages. To think she once thought Nancy a priss-

God, how times have changed.

“You know what we should do?” The girl’s eyes are bright, her hand shooting out to grab Robin’s. Not afraid to touch her, like Judy was. Not disgusted, like her mom. “We should get ice cream.”

“No, absolutely not,” Robin protests. “I’ve had enough of ice cream to last a goddamn lifetime.”

“What, then?” Nancy quirks a perfectly shaped eyebrow.

“What about donuts? Jerry’s is pretty good, down by the movie theatre.”

“Okay. Jerry’s it is then.” She loops her arm through Robin’s and she tries not to die inside.

At Jerry’s they order together; one plain (for Robin) and one with jam (for Nancy), plus two coffees, one white, one black. Robin is seriously impressed that Nancy takes her coffee black, until she pours two sugars in it and stirs it into sickly sweet oblivion. “Maybe you are a priss,” Robin jests, pointedly grabbing the empty sachets and chucking them into the trash.

“Milk, sugar, Jonathan would say we’re both pussies,” Nancy shrugs. “I swear to god, kissing him after he’s had coffee is the grossest thing-”

Robin laughs. “I bet. Sure, it wakes you up, but black coffee is-” And then she freezes. The words die on her tongue.

At the counter, staring at her, is her dad.

Her heart pounds and she can barely hear Nancy as she asks if she’s okay. All she can see is her father’s wide eyes, his customarily dishevelled appearance, the tie that’s always askew. As he approaches she wants to run, but she’s got nowhere to go. Nowhere to hide.

“Hey, Robin,” he says, and it’s so congenial she realises two things at once.

One: her mom hasn’t told him. The bitch is either too cowardly, or else she’s conspiring something entirely more sinister. Robin’s not sure she wants to know which.

Two: it’s another attempt by one of her parents to alienate her against the other. Her dad wants her on his side, facing off against her mom. Robin wouldn’t mind it, only her mom will tell the truth at the first opportunity and then all bets are off.

“Hey,” she says cautiously, while Nancy stiffens.

“Don’t you have school?” He’s clutching a crinkled brown paper bag that probably contains everything her mom rails at him for. (She’s always on a diet, a new fad. Banana and milk one week, cabbage soup the next. Donuts make her physically ill, or so she says.)

She shakes her head. “Not until next week.”

He frowns. “Your mom said you were staying at a friend’s for a bit, so you could study for some project.” He looks at Nancy. “I guess you’re the friend?”

Nancy, to her credit, doesn’t flounder. “Yeah, I am. Nancy Wheeler.”

Her dad looks impressed and Robin struggles not to roll her eyes. “Nice to meet you. Robin, come home for dinner on Friday night. I’ll get your mom to cook something nice.”

She bites her lip and meets Nancy’s eyes over the table. Well, that’s gonna be interesting.