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They were lying on Steve’s bed.
Her legs were tangled up in his, half thrown over them and half crammed underneath, her hair hanging over the side. She was so close that Steve could feel her heartbeat from where she was pressed up against him in nothing but her pyjamas- something that looked a little like a bra, her body heat overwhelming and too much to handle on the hot summers night. Her eyes were closed, but she wasn’t asleep. She snored when she slept.
Steve’s parents weren’t home, of course, so he had called her on the landline, the dial tone long and too loud in his ears after hours- maybe days- of silence. She had rushed right over, her work clothes still tossed in the corner as close to Steve’s chair-drobe as she could get. His stained uniform was still hanging up in the closet. He didn’t have the energy to go into work today. He was surprised that she did.
It was a couple of weeks after the Star Court disaster. The news was starting to call Hawkins a ‘death trap’ filled with ‘nothing but extra-terrestrial trouble’ and ‘scientific experiments gone wrong’. They weren’t far off.
They were tired, still, after nights and days of only waking up for to the bathroom and puke in the sink- a kind of bone-tired that doesn’t go away no matter how hard you try. Steve stayed awake most nights, staring at the ceiling, trying and failing not to think about the Russian’s and the Mind Flayer and the screaming and Billy-
Robin wasn’t much better. She said that she was, and she pretended to be, but Steve knew she wasn’t, not really. Sometimes she would space out and her eyes would dim and Steve knew what she was thinking about. She still threw up more than was strictly normal- the drugs had a bad effect on her insides, and the remaining doctors the Mind Flayer hadn’t assimilated said that it would wear off in time. She still spoke about the McFly’s trying to sleep with each other, but Steve usually tuned her out when she started on that again.
She still had nightmares, too. So did Steve. Maybe that was why she had agreed to come over when Steve had called her. Maybe they were both sick of suffering alone.
The room was stiflingly quiet, almost too quiet to cope with. Steve was sick of the quiet. Robin stirred against him, and Steve held her to make sure she didn’t slide off him- she was in a rather precarious position, lying horizontally across his lap with her head upside down and her legs melding with his. A very odd angle. “I’m tired,” she said.
“I know,” Steve replied because he really truly did.
“But I can’t sleep.”
“I know.”
It was a common conversation. They both often stayed awake staring at the ceiling, finding themselves unable to sleep until the sun rose over the horizon and painted the sky vibrant pinks and oranges. Nightmares were a bitch. Robin moved, lifting her head and shifting her body so she was resting her head in the crook of Steve’s neck, her hair tickling his shoulder. They were both in their pyjamas- they were close enough by now to be comfortable with each other's bare bodies, as odd as it may be. “I fell asleep standing up, today,” she said quietly. “I had to tell them I had a mini-stroke. He almost fired me.”
“I would have let him,” Steve replied. “He’s a dick. I don’t know how you can stand him.”
“You work there too, numb-nuts.”
Steve snorted. “I don’t care. I didn’t even go into work today, that’s how much I don’t care. He’s still a dick, and I still don’t know how you can stand him.”
Her laughter ghosted across his chest and he felt it shake through him. “You’re an idiot,” she said, and Steve knew it to be true. “You own like, a hundred different kinds of studded baseball bats and have taken down those demon-things a million times, but you’re still just an idiot.”
“Yeah,” he said. “I’m sorry, by the way. For dragging you into all this mess. You went from working at an ice-cream shop to being tortured by Russians to having to fight the Mind Flayer with the rest of us. I should have told you what was going on before it all happened. I shouldn’t have kept that from you.”
“Well, you were the one who got tortured,” Robin replied, shakily, and Steve knew that it was her attempt at dodging any pain that came with the memory. “But it was pretty scary. And I... I never want to see you like that again. It was really bad for a while there, Steve. I don’t ever want it to get that bad again.”
Steve licked his lips. “I know. But hey, on the bright side, I doubt we’ll be dealing with any more underground Russian bases any time soon.”
“I fucking hope not,” Robin moaned. “I don’t know how much of this I can take. Not any time soon at least.”
“Welcome to my fucking world,” Steve grumbled. “I’ve been dealing with this shit for years.”
Robin hummed against him, the vibration tickling his chest, and she looked up at him through her eyelashes, too tired to move her head. “Can I ask you a personal question?”
“Sure.”
“Why didn’t it work out with you and Nancy?”
Steve flinched, and Robin must have felt it, but she was kind enough not to say anything about it. “I don’t know.” He said eventually. “I guess she didn’t love me as much as I loved her.”
“Oh,” Robin said quietly. “That sucks.”
It honestly still hurt Steve to think about, so he tried not to. “Yeah, it does,” He licked his lips. “It was a lot harder at the time, though. It’s easier now that it’s over.”
“Why don’t you think it worked out?” Robin asked, reverently, as if speaking to a god in a temple. “You’re obviously still friends. Why couldn’t you just be... together?”
“She loved someone else,” Steve tried not to picture Jonathon’s face in his mind’s eye. He especially tried not to picture Nancy’s face beside him. “I wasn’t good enough. She wanted someone better.”
Robin didn’t know how to reply to that. Steve continued. “Even when we were together, she would always look at Jonathan, you know? And I thought maybe I could ignore it, that I could pretend that she wanted to be with me more than she wanted to be with him, but I don’t know who I was kidding. The only person I could fool was me. The whole school knew it.”
“Steve Harrington, desperate?” Robin tried to joke because Steve’s voice was starting to sound too sad and she promised herself that she would never let Steve sound like that again. They’d been through too much together not to be worried. “Where have I heard this story before?”
Snorting, Steve shifted and pulled Robin closer to him, so she wasn’t in danger of falling off the bed. “I used to be a real asshole, you know?” He said. Robin hadn’t been expecting it. “I hung around with these guys who made me think that being a prick would keep me as the most popular kid in school because if I didn’t have that, I didn’t have anything. I wasn’t smart. I was sporty, sure, I was good at basketball, but there were so many kids on the team who was better than me at it. I just wanted to have a bunch of friends and be cool and have someone love me like I loved them but... I guess I was just asking for too much.”
“Why did you stay around with those guys if they made you a horrible person?”
“They were the only friends I had,” Steve replied. “And I was terrified to lose them because I didn’t want to be all alone. And look where that got me- babysitting a bunch of kids while we destroy dark beings from another world.”
Sighing, Robin glanced up at him, resting her chin on his chest. “For what it’s worth, I like this Steve better.”
Steve didn’t answer. He hadn’t found a version of himself that he liked yet. Instead, he said, “What about you? Have you ever been in love?”
Laughing, Robin shook her head. “It’s a lot harder to get into a relationship when you’re looking for girls,” she said. “It’s awkward to ask, and if you don’t ask and just go for it, then it’s awkward if you’re wrong. I haven’t found the one since I’ve been in Hawkins.”
“Haven’t you always been in Hawkins?”
“That’s my point, dingus.”
Instead of answering, Steve sighed and rested his head against the headboard and stared up at the ceiling. If he had laser vision, he would have burned a hole in his roof from staring at the exact same spot. “Sometimes I feel like packing up all my things and leaving this fucking town, but I couldn’t do that. I couldn’t leave the kids, and I couldn’t leave you, and even though she hurt me more than anyone ever has, I couldn’t leave Nancy. This town is just so fucking crazy. Sometimes I just can’t stand to be here anymore.”
“You could go,” Robin said quietly- like she didn’t really mean it. “Start a new life somewhere else. Somewhere better. I mean, it’s not like your parents are going to notice that you’re gone.”
“I couldn’t leave you,” Steve said again. He felt her smile into his arm.
“Good,” she laughed. “You’d be lost without me there to take care of you.”
Steve breathed deeply through his nose and closed his eyes. It was the most peace he’d had in months, here, with Robin half-naked against him and close to snoring and the sticky summer heat prickling at his skin. “I think I love you,” he said, and he didn’t think anything of it until Robin snapped her head up and sat up, looking down at him with a look Steve couldn’t identify in the dark, but it didn’t look like she was impressed.
“Steve,” she said, a little sternly, a little annoyed. “We’ve already talked about this, remember? I’m into girls.”
Blinking, Steve sat up too and tried not to look at her frown. “No- no. That’s not what I mean. I’m not in love with you. That’d be gross. I just... you’re my best friend. Maybe one day you’ll be a sister, too. I love you like I love Dustin and El and Max and all the kids. I love you because you’re here with me, in my fucking bed, while my parents are on some holiday and everyone else is at home being loved and cared for by their families. You’re here. And I love you for it.”
He was rambling, but Robin’s face softened. “Oh,” she said, gently. Her shoulders relaxed and the frown slowly slid off her face as she lowered herself back down. “Right. I mean, in that case, I love you too.”
Smiling, Steve settled back down too, Robin’s weight a comforting feeling against his side. “Good. That’s good. I’m glad.”
Robin laughed again, a sweet and holy sound, “You’re an idiot, Steve Harrington.”
“Yeah,” Steve laughed too. “Yeah, I guess I am. But you love me anyway.”
“Yeah,” Robin sounded a little surprised to admit it, and her voice full of wonder and glory. “I guess I do.”
They fell asleep like that, huddled together, arm in arm, leg in leg, head against shoulder and the atmosphere too hot to pull a blanket over them, their skin almost feverish. Robin had her hands hooked in Steve’s waistband, Steve’s hand tangled in Robin’s hair; her snoring tickling his skin and his drool dripping down to soak into her shirt.
Maybe their home was a little fucked up, and nobody really cared about them past making sure that they were still breathing. Maybe Steve would never find love and Robin would never stop being exasperated by the little things in life. Maybe Steve would never stop staring at that little spot on the ceiling as he tried to forget a nightmare and maybe Robin would never stop pretending to be alright when she was obviously wasn’t in the slightest.
But maybe they didn’t have to deal with it alone. Maybe they could have nightmares and not be alright together. Maybe they could be single together. Maybe they could be all kinds of fucked up together and maybe they could wake up screaming together and maybe they could go by their days at if the mall hadn’t utterly and totally ruined their lives... together.
Together. Huh. They weren’t used to that. It was nice. Together. Steve and Robin- together.