Chapter Text
Steve had, on more than one occasion, wondered how he could know so little about a person who talks as much and as fast as Road Runner sprints. The person in question, his best friend Robin Buckley, was like a book fell from the shelf, the covers opened wide and inviting, but once you inspect it you find pages had been ripped out, text missing or smudged beyond comprehension.
He knew Robin’s favorite color (orange, like a setting sky on a perfect summers day) and her favorite flick (Rocky Horror Picture Show) and even her favorite day of the week (and why it was superior to all the other days), but he didn’t know the fine details that make up the large print of a person.
He didn’t know her parents, not even their names. No details of siblings, nor of memories like her favorite ice cream she’d pick from the truck that played its jingle all around the caldesacs or her favorite family vacation. He knew nothing of the life she had lived before he knew her at seventeen. Whenever he’d asked, in questions that seemed small and mundane, her answer was always the same rise and fall of her shoulders. I don’t really remember much about my childhood , would greet him with the same cold embrace it always did.
He remembered what she had told him once, over some shared popcorn, her voice somewhat small over the dialogue of Eliza Doolittle as she spoke, “It’s kinda like, like trying to watch a television channel with a bad signal? Like, I can see little glimpses, hear some words here and there, but mostly it’s all just static and fuzz .”
Steve found it odd at best, concerning at worst.
However, he never allowed the concerns to let themselves be heard and known outside the confines of his own mind. He kept them prisoner there, swallowed down any concerned words or phrases that tried to crawl up his throat and leap through his teeth. He figured it was most likely nothing. (Or maybe, that was just something he told himself to make the sharp knife of concern feel a little less dull against his gut)
His attention is taken away from his thoughts and back where it should lay at the rasped demand of “Watch the road, Dingus!” His head tilts to the side just so, eyes roaming towards the corner and narrowing once they’re pointing at the source.
“I am, Robs.” He tells her, statement punctuated with a roll of his eyes, one she mirrors almost instantly.
“Yeah, yeah.” She says, though it’s all tease and jest.
Her hand reaches for the dashboard of Steve’s car, fiddling with the dial to change radio stations as she asks him, “So what’s this thing you even wanna show me anyways?”
“It’s this game called Bunny Farm,” he told her. “We just got it in at work like, two days ago? It needs some touch ups, so it’s stationed in the basement until they fix it and haul it up to the main floor of the arcade. Thought you’d like to try this one out while I work.” He said.
This wasn’t an unfamiliar scenario to the either of them. Steve worked at Palace Arcade, which was the most popular arcade in the small town of Hawkins strictly because it was the only one. And whenever they’d get a new arcade machine in, he’d always sneak Robin down the basement steps, employee’s only sign be damned, and let her hang around and test the new machines before they went up to be played by children with grubby hands and sticky quarters.
It was the first week of summer and business was crazier than ever, with the most frequent of appearances belonging to the kids Steve would babysit on weeknights and the occasional weekend. Robin loved hanging around him there, and now that it was summer and the demands of Advanced Lit and Band had dwindled quite drastically, Robin was soon going to apply to work the prize counter.
It would be her third summer job and the second one she’d apply to strictly to spend her days alongside Steve, (the first being a small and incredibly corny ice cream place that went out of business after a freak fire, to which Robin still snickers at the bitter irony) figuring the long-stretched days of summer would be better spent annoying her best friend from their dual shifts with a little extra change in her pockets then they would be listening and re-listening to her language tapes.
“Duh, Harrington.” She answers, though his previous sentence hadn’t really been a question. Another roll of his eyes greets her again. “What’s the backstory on this one?”
Robin’s favorite thing about arcade games was that each machine had a history, a story to tell besides through overly saturated pixels and cheesy dialogue. Palace Arcade bought its machines used, mostly from places who had went out of business or decided to upgrade. Robin loved to hear what had lead to the machines to be settled against the shaggy neon carpeting of Palace Arcade.
Steve shrugs his shoulders, “I don’t have much of an idea. Keith said it used to belong to some old restaurant and Arcade place that had like, closed its doors only a few months after they opened. Nailed boards and all.”
“Do they know why it closed down?” Robin asks him, and is met with yet another shrug, his eyes glancing at her momentarily before they focus on the road to make his turn.
“Not that Keith knows of or has told me, anyways.” He answered, pulling into the already crowded parking lot of Palace Arcade. “Come on, we gotta sneak ya down there before Keith gets back from his break.” He tells her, and Robin responds with a two fingered salute as she hurriedly unbuckled her seatbelt and dashed towards the double doors.
Robin’s presence once again mocks the lit up employees only sign that hung over the stairs she went bounding down. Her converse squeak aloud in excitement as the soles of them make contact with the cold marbled floor of the basement. Steve follows her, and Robin’s certain that the weight of the hundreds of faculty keys that hang across his waist will send him in a chin first trajectory down the steps.
She voices this concern aloud, though it comes out in a tone less of concern and more of mocking. When Steve does make it down the last step without his chin making contact, he makes a show of it. Holding out his arms in exaggerated grandiose movements, like he expects applause and roses at his feet. A hearty chuckle leaves Robin as her palm playfully shoves itself against his shoulder.
“Dingus,” she snorts.
“So you remind me every day.” Steve says, a smirk playing at his lips. His finger flips a switch, and the dark basement is made only somewhat less so under the buzzing glow of fluorescents. His hand waves her over his shoulder as he walks towards the opposite wall where the machine lay waiting.
“There she is! In all her beauty,” Steve says. There’s this layer of dust that covers the metal like a thin sheet of snow, and Steve curls his hand into a fist which he uses to clear away most of it.
“Gross,” he can’t help but proclaim. A face scrunched in disgust accompanies the proclamation as he wipes the remnants of dust onto the fabric of his jeans.
“Baby,” Robin chuckles, before turning to study the machine.
It’s blue and white and rusted in many areas. Robin could see the reason it was down in the basement for now as she vaguely found herself wracking her brain for the date on when she had last had her tetanus shot. The words BUNNY FARM are written in red bubbly letters, with an image of a bunny with the same color scheme in between the two words. He wears a cheesy hat and bow tie, and Robin can’t help but snort as she points up at it,
“Didn’t know they had permission to use your likeness.” She chuckles, and Steve gives an incredibly sarcastic har-har in response.
He says nothing else as he maneuvers his body around the side of the machine, grappling for the cord abandoned on the floor. He wipes it free of its dust and carefully pushes it into the outlet. The screen flickers to life, and jagged pixels are made clear after the machine blinks itself awake. Robin studies it for a minute, and there’s this strange dejavu that waves it’s fingers at her. She pushes it aside, figuring she must’ve just played a game similar to this.
Robin’s finger presses down on a white button, and the waving cartoonish blue and white bunny hops out of screen, to which a list of previous scores and character profiles takes its place.
“You totally gotta put your name in there so that all the little twelve year olds who’ll come after you will know who’s superior.”
Robin shakes her head and roll’s eyes that hadn’t even spared a glance to look in his direction, focused on the screen in front of her.
“Hmm… alrighty,” she hums. She moves the joystick around to select different letters,
“R…O…,” she says each letter aloud before she goes to hit the N, eyes widening shortly after,
“Shit!” she swears as she messes up, hitting the T instead of the N, “Fuck, I can’t go back,” the end of her sentence breaks off in a light laugh.
“Now who’s the Dingus?” Steve snorts, eyes crinkling in amusement. “Robit, sounds like a frog with a head cold.”
“Oh shove it,” she chuckles.
Steve glances to the watch that lay dormant upon his wrist, and his eyes grow so wide that for a moment Robin really wonders if she’s about to watch them pop out his skull.
“Shit, Keith’s break was over like ten minutes ago,” Steve hisses. He playfully shoves Robin’s shoulder as he moves past her and towards the stairs,
“I’ll come get ya later, have fun!” He says, singsonging the last two words. Robin gages when he’s gone by when she no longer can hear the protests of a hundred keys slamming into one another. Her head turns back to the game,
“Alright, let’s see what we got here,” she speaks aloud to no one but herself as her she presses down on a light blue button to begin.