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“hey, robin?”
steve isn’t sure if robin can even hear him. actually, he’s pretty sure she didn’t. he looks to his right to see her seated at his desk, her head lightly bobbing up and down to the music blaring through her headphones while she’s doing her homework or working on some college application, he doesn’t really know.
it’s become the norm now: robin biking over to steve’s place after school.
(or steve picking her up in his shitty old car whenever it was raining or there was too much snow— and okay, maybe his car isn’t that bad, it’s just that ever since he had driven the toddfather, nothing else can compare.
on those days, steve pulls up in the parking lot of hawkins high, his old stomping ground. sometimes, he allows himself to reminisce about the days when he was known as “king steve”. but then he gets knocked out of his thoughts by robin tapping her knuckles on the passenger side window, and he’s left with a bittersweet feeling that starts to fade as soon as robin pulls out a new mix she made and pops it into his car’s cassette player. he sings with her, obnoxiously loud, but without a care in the world.
and seeing her smile, that’s when all thoughts of his past dissipate.
there are a bunch of reasons he’s glad he tries to be a better man every day and that he’s not the same asshole he was before. one of them being: he never would have had met robin if he was still the king.)
but otherwise, steve expects a knock on his door at half past 3, then robin will come barreling into his house as if she owns the place, which she might as well given how often she’s there.
today is no different. after letting robin in, the two of them immediately go up to his room, because of course robin insists on doing her homework right after school. steve heads over to his record player while robin goes to the desk that’s next to steve’s bed and dumps her backpack on it.
after putting on a random record, steve collapses on his bed with a small “oof” which robin fondly rolls her eyes at.
generic pop music begins to fill the room and robin pointedly pulls out her walkman and puts on a pair of headphones, getting to work. steve can hear bowie playing through them clear as day though, given how loud robin likes to listen to her music.
an hour or so passes without a word spoken between the two, until steve broke the silence. he doesn’t even know why he did it.
he’s on his bed, his back against the headboard with one knee propped up, a magazine laid on his thigh. he had been skimming through the pages, absentmindedly dragging his eyes across the pictures and flashy advertisements, not absorbing anything.
his record player had stopped crooning a while ago, but steve hasn’t even noticed.
maybe robin hadn’t noticed him. he hopes so, not wanting to bother her now that he’s looking at how focused she is on her work. but a part of him hopes she did.
robin’s still scribbling away at the papers haphazardly spread across the desk, and steve stares a little more at her side profile before he turns away, sure his voice is lost to her music. he’s not sure if he’s relieved or disappointed.
but a moment later, robin turns to him, putting down her pen and using that hand to lift her headphones slightly off her right ear.
“you say something?”
steve startles at the sound of her voice and flips the page of the magazine too hard, tearing it a little. robin quirks up one eyebrow and fully removes her headphones, letting them rest around her neck.
“oh, i didn’t think you could hear me,” steve says half-heartedly and robin sighs, the same kind she does when she’s had enough of steve’s antics.
“i can still see you, dingus,” she says, pointing at her lips to show how she was able to catch steve. when steve doesn’t even crack a half-smile at the nickname, robin’s own smile falters. “hey, what’s up with you today, man? you seem... different. even your hair looks sad.” robin pokes fun at him again to try to get him to smile, but to no avail.
instead of retorting with an equally poorly thought out insult, he gives a short chuckle and says nothing else in response.
steve had been out of it this whole week, actually, now that robin thought about it. he hasn’t been munching away at his usual, literally armful of snacks he always brought up to his room during their hangouts, he hasn’t been dancing around to his favorite songs on his record player, he hasn’t been bantering with robin with the same fervor he usually does.
“steve... are you having nightmares again?” robin asks, her hands involuntarily curling up into loose fists, apprehensive about his answer.
“no! no, i’m fine... well, on that end,” steve makes sure to reassure her quickly.
“then what is it?”
steve fidgets with the magazine some more, rolling the corner of a page in between his fingers. robin waits patiently for him to speak, knows that something had happened to him in his past that’s made it so he’s reluctant to be vulnerable (which slipped out after a night of drinking, but robin decided not to push it after steve began his next sentence with “nan-“ then shook his head and decided that swigging the rest of the vodka in the bottle was a better decision. neither she or steve ever brought it up again).
steve instead suddenly winces in pain, pulling his finger away from the pages, a droplet of blood forming on the tip.
robin gives a small “tsk” and leaps out of her chair to sit on the edge of steve’s bed. she takes his hand and inspects his pointer finger, then leans over and grabs a tissue from his desk, pressing it on the paper cut. it wasn’t exactly as bad as say, getting possessed by the mind flayer, but robin hates to see steve in any pain at all. not ever since she’s seen him literally beaten up until he passed out from the pain. all the while, steve has his head slightly bowed down, eyes focused on his knees.
“okay, steve. seriously. what’s going on?”
steve lightly tugs his hand towards himself, and robin gets the hint and releases her grip on him. he discards the bloodied tissue on the floor and pulls up his other knee, then brings both his knees to his chest. robin fully gets on the bed and mimics steve’s position, facing him.
“do you remember that conversation we had in the bathroom at starcourt?” steve asks. his voice wavers ever so slightly, and his head is still bowed. “yeah, of course i do.” robin can’t help but notice that they’re in the exact same position they were in all those months ago in that cramped and vibrantly colored bathroom stall.
“okay. do you remember the first question you asked me during your interrogation?”
“i...” robin wracks her brain to remember, the answer coming to her after a couple seconds. “i asked you if you’ve ever been in love.”
steve nods and finally looks up to face robin. “and i said, yeah, nancy wheeler.”
robin nods her head, furrowing her brows, wondering where this was going.
“but... she’s not the only one.”
“what?” robin can’t help but ask. it’s not like steve’s gonna confess his feelings for her again... right? she made it pretty clear that she’s a lesbian and steve accepted that and they’ve been the best of friends ever since.
“have you ever been in love?” steve completely disregards her and hits her with another question.
“i- uh,” robin sputters, caught off guard. “yeah. i have.”
“with who? y’know, besides tammy thompson.”
robin resists the urge to correct him, to tell him it was just a crush, steve, and says, “charlie, from band camp a couple summers ago.”
“this charlie- was he a boy?”
robin isn’t sure why steve even has to ask this. “no, no. her real name’s charlotte but she preferred to go by charlie.”
“oh.”
“steve...?” robin asks, a feeling of dread crawling into her mind.
“robin,” steve whispers. his hands clench around his kneecaps, his nails making red indentations in his skin. “nancy’s not the only one,” he repeats, his voice still dangerously low, as if he was afraid someone was listening in to their conversation.
“i- i know, steve.”
“nicky.”
as soon as steve says the name, his shoulders sag, as if a huge weight had been lifted off of them.
robin swallows thickly. “nicky as in... nicole?”
“no... nicky as in nicholas.”
realization dawns on robin after a heartbeat and she starts to speak, but steve interrupts, rambling as if his life depends on it.
“how do you know what love feels like, robin? like, real love. i thought the love i had for nancy was real, but how can it be real if i also felt the same way towards nicky? i saw him at melvald’s the other day for the first time since freshman year and everything with him just fucking came rushing back,” steve says with palpable pain in his voice. “i loved them both so much, i swear. but you’re only supposed to love one, you’ve gotta pick one of the other. so i kept trying to convince myself that everything with nicky was just a one time thing, but i… i still feel that way about boys.”
he stops to catch his breath, and runs a hand through his hair.
“i’ve never heard of someone feeling the same way towards boys as they do with girls, so there’s just gotta be something wrong with me... like i’m broken or something and god damn it, i cant even get being gay or straight right, of course i-“ steve finally stops speaking, the sob that had been bubbling in his throat escaping. he screws his eyes shut and lets it take over his body. tears fall from his eyes as he leans down, resting his forehead on his knees, his frame shaking.
“steve,” robin cries out, and she lurches forward to envelop him in a hug. she doesn’t have a chance to fully wrap her arms around him before steve all but collapses into her, his body seemingly having no energy to support itself. he buries his face into her shoulder, uses his hands to clutch onto the back of her shirt, as if she was the only thing that was grounding him.
robin runs her fingers through his hair in an attempt to calm him down, continues to do so until she can feel his hands let go of the fabric of her shirt and rest at her sides.
“this has been eating me alive, robin,” steve admits, his voice muffled because he was speaking into her shoulder. “and i’m sorry that i asked if charlie was a boy, i should’ve known better. it’s just that-“ he pulls away from her, and robin is finally able to see his face. his eyes are red-rimmed and are looking at anywhere but her. “i just thought that maybe there was a chance you were also... like me.”
steve speaks the last two words in an almost inaudible whisper, as if they were curses and he was a little kid trying not to get caught by his parents saying them. he bites the inside of his lip then returns to his previous position with his arms wrapped tight around his knees, trying to make himself as small as possible.
“steve. look at me,” robin says firmly.
reluctantly, steve shifts his eyes to robin’s. he’s surprised to see an impossibly soft gaze directed at him.
“don’t be sorry,” she says, gently shaking her head. “and you’re not broken, steve. you’re not broken.”
“yes, i-“
“no- steve, i promise. you’re good. everything’s all good.” a small smile appears on robin’s lips and she grabs both of steve’s hands in hers. “your love is real, steve. it’s called being bisexual.”
“...bisexual?” steve says for the first time in his life, but as the word rolls off his tongue, he feels as if he’s saying an old friend’s name. his hands feel warm where robin’s skin is pressed against his and his chest gets a little less tighter.
robin gives a tiny nod and makes a sound of affirmation. “yup. it just means that there’s so much love in your heart that there’s enough to go around for everybody.” with this, steve cracks a smile. robin starts swinging their intertwined hands lightly and gets a mischievous glint in her eyes. “y’know... i sure hope your taste in guys isn’t as shitty as your taste in movies.”
steve can’t help but laugh— hard. he doesn’t know why, but he starts giggling and soon it transforms into a belly laugh so hard that tears start to form in the corners of his eyes.
maybe it was out of the sheer amount of relief or happiness he felt or because of how delirious he was feeling after a particularly sleepless week, or maybe all of the above.
robin joins in with him, falling onto her back, and steve hunches over her, his body weak from all the emotions he felt in the past couple minutes, and the moment feels so, so-
cathartic.
he feels the doubt and self-hatred that was shadowing over him float away and he knows that they aren’t gone for good, but at least they were gone for this moment.
of course robin would know exactly how to make him feel better. his mind travels back to their conversation at starcourt, to the way they laughed and sang together after robin came out to him.
his heart feels so full, he feels like it’s gonna burst.
“robin,“ he says through his laughter. she stops laughing but a brilliant smile remains on her face. “yeah?”
“you’re my best friend. i- i mean it. i love you so much.”
“i love you too, dingus,” robin says, and quirks a corner of her lips up. she sits back up again and regards steve fondly for a couple seconds, then swings her legs off the bed. “come on!”
steve’s eyes widen, confused. “what?”
“let’s go on a drive. i’ll even let you pick the music.” robin wiggles her eyebrows enticingly.
“aw, come on robin, i just cried off half my body weight,” steve pretends to sound annoyed, but honestly, he feels like going out and getting some fresh air would be good for him.
“yes, exactly. so now we have to replace it with ice cream.”
robin’s already out the bedroom door and bounding down the stairs, and steve grabs his keys from his bedside table, throws them in the air once and catches them.
yeah, ice cream sounds pretty nice too.